


How Do You Make a Home?

by ProsperDemeter



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/F, Gay Harry Osborn, Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging, M/M, Norman Osborn's A+ parenting, One-Sided Harry Osborn/Peter Parker, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony Stark Acting as Harley Keener's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:28:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26127268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProsperDemeter/pseuds/ProsperDemeter
Summary: "The old world and the new world could be separated by a variety of things. For one, the old world had many more people in it. Officially half the world’s population had disappeared in a single moment and then another three hundred million had died as a result of accidents, abandonment, and a slew of other problems. A month later and there was still no official word from the Avengers on what exactly had transpired but, as depressing as it was to say, life went on.They met exactly two months since the world had ended and three months before Tony Stark finally made it back to the planet."
Relationships: Harley Keener & Tony Stark, Harley Keener/Harry Osborn, Harry Osborn & Gwen Stacy
Comments: 15
Kudos: 30





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shaderose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaderose/gifts), [censored](https://archiveofourown.org/users/censored/gifts).



> I don't even know.
> 
> Title from Apple Pie by Lizzy McAlpine

Everyone’s lives could be measured by precise moments and  _ this _ was bound to be one for the ages. He could see it now -  _ where were you at the end of the world _ ? 

His was pretty underwhelming, if he were to be honest. Much like everything else in Rose Hill the apocalypse hit in slow, sepia toned piles of dust in the middle of the late afternoon. The sun was setting over the fields, painting the sky in probably the best sunset Tennessee had seen in  _ years _ and Harley had been under the 1969 blue stripe Camaro blasting music older than he was. Abbie’s footsteps hadn’t been hesitant and he had seen the toes of her pink painted nails and tanned ankles against the pavement. “Harley!” She had called his name like it was an emergency and, yet, when he pushed himself out from under the car, she was gone and, in her place, was a pile of ash and dust. 

He didn’t really know what had happened, and had been much too tempted to shrug off the worry that her voice had induced and go right back to his previous position. But something had…  _ itched _ at him until he moved. Harley pulled himself up to his full height - all gangly limbs and torn old grey t-shirt and scuffed up shoes - and wiped off his hands with a rag while in search of his sister. 

He never found her. 

He never found  _ anyone _ . 

The majority of Rose Hill had turned into ash, dust and sand and, aside from the sirens in the distance, Harley heard nothing but the roaring in his ears. The television was on and  _ someone _ \- not their usual newscaster but an  _ intern _ \- was talking about an alien invasion, a fight the Avengers lost and… well the decimation of half the population. 

Harley didn’t know how long he had been sitting there on their old rickety and floral couch - it could have been a day, a week, a  _ month _ . Time had slowed down, no one had come looking for him and it was only with a very hollow pain that Harley realized that no one  _ would _ . 

The trouble with small towns was that, if no one was around anymore, then there was no one to butt into your business. 

He never thought he would see the lack of attention as a curse. 

It was startlingly, in that moment when he had finally regained the ability to function, that he realized that he was only  _ seventeen _ and, being seventeen, had never been prepared for the possibility of abruptly being  _ alone _ . He had fought with his mother the day before, had steadfastly ignored Abbie for most of the entire week, and hadn’t returned  _ any _ phone calls or texts that Tony Stark had sent him in a month. Suddenly being thrust into a world without  _ any _ of them wasn’t something Harley had ever bothered to prepare for. 

The news didn’t have any information on the Avengers and neither did the internet. None of them had updated their social media accounts and that was with the entire world asking where they were. It was like they had retreated with their tails between their legs and ears down. Earth’s mightiest defenders. It was all bullshit if you asked him. 

Still, Harley didn’t know where else to go, he felt very much like the criminal he wasn’t when he drove the Camaro to the gas station and filled up without paying. He loaded the passenger seat with snacks and bottled coffee (and a case of water in the back seat) and knew that  _ nowhere _ , not even Nashville, actually had the capacity to  _ fix _ the tragedy that had just occurred. And if no one else was going to fix it - which was what it  _ seemed  _ like - than  _ he _ was going to at the least die trying. 

He started his drive to New York without a license but the police were too busy to worry about an unregistered 1969 Camaro driving from Tennessee and it’s unlicensed driver. He started the long drive to New York City two days after the end of the world. 

\---

_ Where were you at the end of the world _ ? 

Harry’s answer to that question was much more dramatic than most. 

You see, the initial invasion in New York City brought  _ havoc _ to the people and, in true superhero fashion, the destruction it brought was more than any of the heroes stuck around to try and fix. And while it was true that Harry held much more respect for the heroes of the world than his father did even he could admit, while breathing in ash and dust and with a bleeding cut down his cheek from the  _ alien spaceship _ that had crashed into the building with his last name on it, that the heroes were doing a shit job at the moment. Speaking of his father, Harry had lost him in the commotion of an exploded office and, when he managed to push himself to his elbows, he wasn’t exactly startled to see the giant hole where his father’s desk had once been. 

The idea of his father dying as a result of an alien  _ spaceship _ was enough to make Harry’s head spin. 

Or maybe that was the concussion. 

The world was a cacophony of ringing in his ears, flashing emergency lights, and the loud blaring fire alarm even though Harry could see no fire. He worked on autopilot, stumbled to his feet, and thought, for a moment, about edging his way over to the giant hole in the ground and looking  _ down _ to see if he could find his father’s broken body displaced over broken glass and walls. The floor groaned with every step and when he put a hand on the wall to steady himself it fell out from under his weight. 

There was no  _ office _ on the other side of his father’s wall, only cold air and empty space. 

Harry teetered on the edge of falling to his death and splattering over the concrete pavement of Times Square and grabbed onto a lamp of all things to pull himself back inside. 

The city was chaos. 

He looked down and saw nothing but destruction. There was a ten car pile up - a bus without a driver but full of passengers slamming into the Disney store and no foreseeable way down. 

Falling would have, maybe, been the easiest way of dealing with his present situation but Harry had never been the type of person to want to die. 

It wasn’t a sprint that got him out of the building and, honestly, most of the staircases were lined with fire and Harry had probably fallen to his knees more times than was normal. He hadn’t located his father, had, instead, tripped over three burned and unmoving bodies, and collided head first with an intern with ash in her usually white blonde hair. Gwen Stacy was a sight to be seen at the end of the world and they didn’t know each other  _ well _ but any familiar face that  _ wasn’t _ dead was enough for Harry to almost weap. 

She looked as terrible as he felt. 

“Where is everyone?” She asked, her voice tinged in fear and anxiety and she sounded a little bit like Peter - an  _ old _ friend that Harry hadn’t seen since he had went to Midtown and Harry had gone to Horizon - and that made his heart rate slow, just enough to answer.

“I don’t… I don’t know.” He shrugged helplessly but Gwen didn’t do anything but nod. 

The ceiling above them creaked ominously. 

Miraculously - and Harry blamed the concussion again for not remembering how - they made it outside but, honestly, outside wasn’t much better than  _ inside _ . 

New York looked like the ground zero it was even long after the space ship disappeared over the horizon. 

It was a week later, sitting in a makeshift hospital bed with Gwen on one side of him (with a fever on the verge of  _ dying) _ and one of the few lawyers that still existed telling him that, even at sixteen, he was now the  _ sole _ owner of all Oscorp property that Harry decided that their heroes had abandoned them. 

\---

The  _ old world _ and the  _ new world _ could be separated by a variety of things. For one, the old world had many more people in it. Officially  _ half _ the world’s population had disappeared in a single moment and  _ then _ another three hundred million had died as a result of accidents, abandonment, and a slew of  _ other _ problems. A month later and there was still no official word from the Avengers on what exactly had transpired but, as depressing as it was to say, life went on. 

They met exactly two months since the world had ended and  _ three _ months before Tony Stark finally made it back to the planet. Oscorp was a mess - Harry didn’t know  _ how _ to run a company at sixteen even with the help of the few senior board members that had survived. Schools hadn’t bothered to pick back up yet and, even with the Vice-President turned President giving daily encouraging speeches it was clear to everyone that the world was one more shit storm away from falling to pieces. Harry’s new normal was living in a too big house with Gwen Stacy and trying to figure out exactly  _ how _ she managed to get superpowers at the end of the world. 

Cosmic intervention, perhaps, because New York had lost their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man in the fight. Peter Parker hadn’t returned from that spaceship either. 

Harry was trying very hard  _ not _ to think about everything he had lost when so many others had lost  _ so much _ more. 

Harry had always had much more money than he could possibly think of spending but it turned out that, when his father for all intents and purposes  _ disappeared _ , he had been left even  _ more _ money than he knew what to do with. So far he had managed to mandate that all  _ alive _ staff of Oscorp were to  _ stay _ on payroll and the families of the employees that were missing or confirmed dead were well taken care of. The board was talking about reconstruction, about building a more  _ updated _ Oscorp office and Harry… well Harry was still reeling from the sudden, and very  _ real _ , responsibility. 

No one plans, at sixteen, to have to be the CEO of a company. 

It was  _ that _ that found Harry sneaking out of his own house for just a  _ moment _ of fresh post-apocalyptic air. He had been fielding phone calls all day and it was in the past two months that he finally started to understand his father’s tendency to pour himself a glass of very expensive whiskey before talking business. Not that Harry relied on the vice of an alcoholic drink - he honestly still had never even tried it save for a quick sip when he was thirteen at Ben Parker’s funeral and he hadn’t liked it enough to want to try it again. Truth be told, Harry was well into the world of  _ overly paranoid _ and he didn’t like the idea of losing more control when he had already lost  _ so much _ of it in such a short period of time. 

But, anyway, they met two months  _ after _ the collapse of the  _ old world _ and the start of the  _ new world _ at the broken down ruins of the old Oscorp building. Harry stood in the middle of that giant O that used to signal  _ home _ and thought that, if he and Peter had stayed in touch all those years ago, he would have  _ maybe _ been able to convince him to stay instead of climb up the side of a spaceship and never return.

Would they have been friends still? Would they have  _ worked _ together? Was it really simply growing apart that kept them from speaking for years? 

Or was that too the fault of the universe? Peter had Tony Stark so he didn’t need Harry Osborn. He had looked up May and seen that she was listed as missing as well and thought that it was good. Nice that neither of them would have to live in the world without the other. 

Harry knew he was lucky. He had money and Gwen and… a  _ possibility _ to help but, if he were to be honest, he didn’t know  _ how _ . This didn’t seem like the type of problem that throwing money at could fix. 

Gwen said he  _ was _ helping. That  _ she _ was helping - in her sweatsuit going out and moving heavy rubble that no one should have been able to move. New York had more heroes than Spider-Man, afterall, and the fractured remains of what was coined the Defenders had stepped up to the plate to help when the Avengers disappeared.

“Listen man,” It was distinctly  _ not _ a New York accent that caught his attention out of his self pity, the slow drawl of a southern voice out of place in the ruins of a fractured New York. Tourists weren’t exactly a  _ thing _ at the moment - not since the President had issued a Stay in Place Order that hadn’t been lifted. “You don’t have to hurt the kid.” 

“He stole my money.”  _ That _ was a New York accent and Harry was one of the few that thought it incredibly rude that if the apocalypse had to take half of  _ anyone _ it hadn’t bothered to take only those that were bad. He, cautiously, rounded the corner and stopped just behind a quivering little back of a kid that  _ had _ to be, at the most, two years old. He had patchy brown hair, dirt covering every available surface, and was clutching a wallet that the  _ other _ man had seemingly dropped. 

The army hadn’t been able to locate every missing child yet. 

Harry didn’t want to think of the horrors a two year old had been forced to see. 

“He picked up a  _ wallet _ .” The southern drawl was coming from  _ up _ and by  _ up _ Harry meant a… floating suit of armor over the tower of rubble. 

As he said, New York had more heroes than Spider-Man. 

Tony Stark, though, hadn’t returned from the spaceship that Peter had been on and  _ this _ suit was an odd blend of gold and purple that stood out a lot more like  _ hope _ than the red and gold ever had. “He won’t give it back!” The other man, obviously on his last straw of humanity with scraggly black hair and a patchy beard, was holding a rusty steak knife and, compared to the shaking little boy, he  _ looked _ like a monster that goes bump in the night. 

“Maybe it has something to do with the  _ knife _ .” It was funny that even a suit of armor couldn’t disguise an accent or, perhaps, that was just how it was designed. Harry wondered if whoever was in it had been given  _ permission _ to steal Stark Tech or had just decided that looting and becoming a hero himself was perfectly fair when Stark wasn’t even there to stop him. 

Not that Harry could  _ blame _ him, he just thought someone like Stark would have had better security on his weapons of mass destruction. Still, there was a very real danger that it posed if he  _ hadn’t _ had permission to wear the Stark suit. That very real danger was the fact that, without permission, the chance that he actually knew how to  _ use  _ it was slim to none. Which meant this entire thing had the chance of going very bad very fast. 

Harry, with a net worth now of  _ too much to handle _ , was struck with perhaps the worst idea he had ever had in his last sixteen years of life - and Harry had decided piercing his ears was a  _ good  _ idea back when he was fourteen and begged Norman until he gave in just to get him to shut up. His wallet was still shiny leather that was smooth under his palms. He had inherited his father’s ability to carry a ridiculous amount of cash on his person at all times and, whatever that small cracking wallet had in it was  _ nothing _ compared to what Harry carried in his own. “Take it.” He waved it over at the man with the knife. 

Purple Ironman turned to him at the same time as knife wielding dickhead and the little boy, all trembling two year old of him, jumped so much that he dropped the wallet and started crying. 

Harry didn’t spend a lot of time around kids in his life - his longest exposure was to whatever kids the executives at Oscorp had brought to bring your kid to work day. Still, he didn’t think the jumpy nature of  _ this _ two year old was anything except born out of pure trauma and he didn’t have the  _ time _ to bother explaining his motivations and, instead, wrestled the cash - a ridiculous bundle of 100s and Harry sometimes wondered at  _ himself _ \- out of his wallet to toss at the man. It fluttered around them and into the rubble when he failed to catch it. “Dude,” It was the man in Purple armor that said it, something akin to amazement and jealousy all mixed in one bleeding from his voice. 

“Give me  _ your _ wallet, kid.” The man with the knife said and Harry should have  _ known _ it was coming and yet, still, the words shocked him. Because there was a two year old crying so much Harry was pretty sure he was going to forget to breathe and backing quick into Harry’s legs as though he were someone to be trusted, a purple  _ Ironman _ floating in the sky, and a man with a rusty steak knife walking closer to him. If this were any other time in Harry’s life, any other time in the  _ world _ , Harry was pretty sure the universe would have shook itself hard enough that the man fell over. If this was a different New York even three months ago a web would have shot out of nowhere and plastered the guy to the brick wall and  _ this _ would have been the moment that reunited Harry Osborn and Peter Parker. Harry wouldn’t have let him leave, would have addressed him by his name just quiet enough that only Peter heard or… or maybe he would have let him leave. Maybe he would have let Peter be angry with him forever for his involvement in what had made Peter who he was. Maybe he would have thanked Spider-Man for saving his life and, inside, screamed out for a friend that he didn’t deserve anymore. 

Regardless, life wasn’t a movie. Or, rather, if  _ this _ was a movie it certainly wasn’t one where he was the protagonist. The man lunged when none of them moved, the man in purple flying armor tried to fly forward and  _ instead _ flew backwards, and Harry… well Harry had taken fencing since he was five and had a security guard named Frankie that had been determined that Harry knew the bare basics of self-defense. The knife wielding man was drug hazed fast… Harry was faster. He sidestepped the knife and threw a sharp and precise elbow to the man’s nose that had him stumbling back with blood painting the bottom half of his face. He swore, Harry kicked his knife away and stepped bodily in front of the child. “Take the money and get the hell out of here.” 

\---

“Who the hell are you,” Gwen asked when she arrived home from wherever she was off helping earlier that day. She kicked at Harley’s armor with a steel toed boot and chugged her water a bit too fast. Of course, at that point in time, Harley didn’t even know who Gwen was aside from Harry’s roommate. In fact, he barely even knew  _ Harry _ . He had recognized his face but that was only once the kid had thrown a thousand dollars worth of hundreds at the homeless junkie to try and save a two year old kid. He had watched with some sort of dawning awe as the ginger haired teen had kneeled down in front of the two year old and comforted without touching. He had listened as he offered food and a place to sleep for the night and had followed because, even  _ if _ Harry Osborn was also a kid that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to leave a lost two year old in his care as though he were someone to be trusted. Too many kids had gone missing in the United States that  _ weren’t _ part of the half of the population that had disappeared. He had followed like a lost puppy to a big mansion just outside of the city with an odd security system that still  _ worked _ despite the broken cell towers and general destruction of the world that was slowly picking itself back up. 

This mansion had to be one of the few places to still have power, though when Harley looked up at the rooftop he wasn’t shocked to notice the solar panels latched onto the modern architecture. The media was split on how they commonly portrayed the Osborns - either they were the second coming of Christ or Norman Osborn was the devil himself. They didn’t cover much on the heir to the fortune aside from his name, grades, and apparent ability to make himself look like a  _ good person _ without really trying. Harley had shucked out of the suit only at a look of annoyance when he tried to fly it through the door and it was standing like sentinel by the living room couch. He had helped silently with making a meal for the lost two year old, had let something close to heartbreak tug at him when the little boy had eaten his weight in food, laid down on the couch and fallen asleep to Snow White curled against Harry’s side. 

The little boy didn’t speak. In fact,  _ neither _ of them spoke. 

It was oddly domestic. A weird  _ cheers _ to the old world they had grown up a part of. Harley hadn’t expected to land in Harry Osborn’s fancy living room with tall windows and bookshelves on the walls but… well here he was. And he hadn’t been kicked out either. 

They had both been silent, ruminating over the facts of their odd camaraderie until the scary girl with blonde hair and edge of danger and hope walked through the door. She had looked at them, had a conversation with blue eyes that Harley couldn’t hear, grabbed a water bottle and kicked Harry enough that he moved over to make room for her on the couch. She didn’t say anything about the sleeping child and her eyes only softed a bit on the danger when Harry took a moment to lay a thick, wool blanket over the little boy’s shoulders.

Which led them to now and Gwen Stacy staring him down from across the living room of Harry Osborn as though  _ Harley _ was the dangerous one out of the three of them. “Iron Man 2.0?” 

\--

Their partnership - their  _ friendship _ \- didn’t happen overnight. Harley stayed at the Osborn mansion because there wasn’t really anywhere else  _ to _ go and neither Harry nor Gwen asked him to leave. The little boy stays with them too, he decided quickly in that rubble alleyway that he was stupidly attached to Harry’s side and Harley was only a little envious of the hero worship in the boy’s green eyes whenever he watched Harry do anything. 

It was odd, Harley thought, because Pepper Stark had allowed him access to Stark Tower and offered him a bed and a pillow but Pepper Stark had done that for  _ any _ child lost in New York. Stark Tower -  _ Avengers _ tower - had turned into a haven for the lost children of the world. It was two weeks into sleeping in a guest room on a pillow softer than a cloud that Harley  _ finally _ asked what he wanted to since the beginning. “What are you doing?” 

Harry was pouring over some blueprint that honestly looked more expensive than anything Harley had ever worn and it was a  _ piece of paper _ . He found it a little too easy to see that Harry was woefully confused and out of his element and Harley wondered, then, if the end of the world had really been that much kinder to him than it had been to the rest of them. Or had it, perhaps, been more cruel. Sure, Harley had lost his mother and Abbie and  _ Tony _ and it hurt more than Harley had the bandwidth to explore without breaking down, but he hadn’t been thrust into the label of  _ decision maker _ and  _ CEO _ and whatever other title Harry had been given without prompting. “Why did you take that?” Harry Osborn, though, was still the son of one of the most respected CEOs in the science, technology and business world. Call Norman Osborn the devil or the messiah or whatever you wanted to call him - he had been  _ good _ at what he did. If he had been a good person was what was really up for debate. 

“The suit?” Harley hadn’t actually had more than a ten minute conversation with Harry in the two weeks he had spent in his house. He had talked to Gwen more, had gone with her to put New York back together while Harry stayed behind to do  _ whatever _ he did in an office with a mute child. He had asked her why she stayed at the mansion and the look she had given him was one so severe that he had never asked again.  _ Why have you?  _ Her eyes seemed to ask. Harley  _ still _ didn’t have an answer for that. “Someone has to show them they’re not alone.” 

The people of the world had been screaming out for heroes and Harley had been too drawn in by their pleas to  _ not _ answer when he had the ability to. He had been given Pepper Stark’s blessing to take the suit even if he supposed it  _ had  _ been idiotic to not at least give it a test drive before taking it out. She had yet to ask for it back -  _ he would have wanted you to have it _ , she had said with a hand on her pregnant and barely protruding belly the one time they had seen each other. She also had yet to ask for  _ him _ back and Harley supposed it made sense. She barely knew Harley and he barely knew her and she had bigger things to worry about than some seventeen year old kid her husband had been at least mildly attached to. She had spoken to him out of obligation, had offered him a place at Stark Tower because that was simply what she did. “And you can’t do that as just any other normal human being?” Harry didn’t look at him when he asked it but Harley heard the underlying question. 

_ You have a Stark suit. Are you ready to be branded as the next him? _

Harley thought it was a fair one, he had been asking himself that too. Gwen had been asking him that with her eyes for weeks. It seemed a lot of their communication was silent and Harley wasn’t  _ used _ to silent lines of implied questions. “People don’t know who I am.” Harley said slowly, perhaps putting more thought into the question than was necessary. “People know who Ironman is.” 

“Ironman went up into a spaceship three months ago with Spider-Man and Doctor Strange and never returned.” The thing about Harry Osborn was that he was a born and bred businessman. He had a counter for everything. “People see you in that suit and they don’t think Ironman. They think about the Avengers that fought a war on their planet and turned their backs once they lost.” 

“That’s not very fair now is it,” Harley counters himself, something like hot rage in his stomach trying to push its way upwards. “They did what they could.” 

“Did they?” Harry looked at him then, blue eyes the color of the Camaro’s stripes and he had  _ freckles _ painted over his nose and cheeks and bags under his eyes. “These people don’t need heroes, not anymore.” 

“What do they need then?” 

“Hope.” 

\--

Hope. 

Harry thinks hope is bullshit and he has only the bare minimum but, somehow, he lets this random country boy with a thick Tennessee accent that smooths over words like hay falling into a barrel talk him into rebuilding the Oscorp building  _ and _ a community outreach center. The Board of Directors are over the moon, the New York Times calls it the first good news in a long time, and Harry somehow offers 20,000 new jobs to a struggling and broken public. 

Things don’t get perfect but… things get  _ better _ . And  _ better _ isn’t the broken they were at the start. 

He lets Gwen name the community center and he pretends he doesn’t notice Harley helping her design a suit but they both listen when he leaves a post-it note on Gwen’s doorway that tells her to design it after Spider-Man’s suit. Harry is ridiculously good at reverse engineering and he had also known Peter Parker since he was three years old. He knew how he thought and he had visited the Parker’s old apartment building exactly once. He had taken the notebook that had Peter’s handwriting pressed tight into the margins and the picture he kept on his nightstand of him and Ben and May and fingered the old Spider-Man suit stuffed in the corner of his closet with a snort. What use was a onesie against bullets? Harry wished Peter had trusted him enough for him to ask him. 

He ripped the web formula from the page, taken the onesie and tossed it in the fireplace at the mansion he had always called home and curled up beside the little brown haired boy he basically adopted and cried against the pillow he rested his head against. Cathartic as it was, it didn’t actually  _ solve _ anything. 

Harry handed Gwen the web formula the next day over their ritual of morning coffee and blueprints on how to fix a broken world. 

Hope, Harry decided, was Harley Keener and the little brown haired boy with big green eyes that tugged on his hand and pointed to the name Stanley in the children’s book Harry had found stuffed in his closet. Hope was Gwen Stacy in a white, pink, black and teal suit and that first day she went out to help the people. Hope was Martin Li coming to  _ Harry _ to propose a collaboration and not once looking down at him for his age but offering, instead, to help him figure out what exactly his place was in this new world. 

Hope… well that was something Harry hadn’t had for months. 

\--

The Avengers popped back on the radar at around the same time a spaceship shows back up on planet earth. The news reported on it like it was the end of the world which Harley thought was awfully fair considering the last time a spaceship had crashed into their planet. They were lucky the army was busy or they would have been on top of the Avengers upstate compound in a matter of minutes. 

Harley was there because Pepper asked him to be, Gwen was there purely because at that point Harley and her were a  _ team _ that didn’t trust other people around  _ their _ people, Harry was there because, well, Harley was pretty sure he was their billionaire benefactor at that point, and little Stanley was there because he refused to leave Harry’s side for more than a moment. Harley wasn’t sure what he expected but it wasn’t the way Pepper held a hand to his cheek like he was a thing to be treasured after five months of barely there phone calls and the bare minimum. “You look good.” She told him in a soft voiced murmur that no one else was meant to hear. 

Only Gwen Stacy -  _ Ghost _ Spider because that was the most badass pseudonym Harley had ever heard - had all of the enhancements of Spider-Man and then some and her enhanced hearing had her tilting her head just a bit at the words. 

No one else in the room acknowledged them which Harley supposed was a good thing. “He’s in there.” Pepper stroked his cheek and Harley didn’t know  _ what _ he expected when he opened the door to what had to be a conference room but it wasn’t Tony Stark, skinny, emaciated, on the verge of collapse, grabbing tight onto Captain America’s chest with words of venom shooting through his mouth. 

Harley caught him before anyone else could, took note of the wires sticking out of him and the way he looked at Harley like he was seeing a ghost and tried not to study his old and lined face like he was doing the same. “Harley.” Tony breathed his name as though it were the only thing worth saying which, with his pregnant wife  _ right there _ was enough to make Harley’s heart break just a little. 

“Hey old man.” Harley tried for a smile but he wasn’t sure it worked. Tony’s arms were spiney and skinny and fragile when they wrapped around his neck to pull him into a fierce hug and Harley let himself be held by the one adult he actually had left in the world. 

“So this is where the Avengers have been hiding.” Gwen didn’t phrase it like a question and Stanley was backed up so far against Harry’s legs it was like he was trying to fade back into him and make himself invisible. “Nice of you to show your faces.” 

No one flinched except for Tony but he was also crying into Harley’s shoulder like he had just been reunited with something he hadn’t believed he could have. “I lost him.” Tony muttered and Harley knew who he was talking about even without an explanation. “The kid.” 

Harry made a broken noise from behind them but when Harley glanced at him his face was carefully blank. Contrary to popular belief back in Tennessee, Harley wasn’t an idiot. Harry Osborn had  _ known _ Spider-Man or, at the very least, had been a  _ fan _ . Harley would bet anything on a friendship, wouldn’t hesitate to say that  _ that _ was why Harry had come with him and Gwen upstate. He had held out some sort of silent hope that the arrival of the spaceship and Tony Stark would be the arrival of Spider-Man. “We all lost people.” Captain America said the exact sort of deprecating and unhelpful shit he did in those public service announcements but Harley supposed it was  _ true _ . The Avengers were as shattered and scattered as the rest of them. 

“The difference is that the rest of us aren’t hiding from the consequences.” Sometimes Harley forgot that Harry was vicious as he was kind. Sometimes he forgot the Harry that he had first met that broke a homeless drug addict’s nose with an angry elbow to the face. And then, other times like this, he was reminded that Harry could hold himself up to look like an average person but was anything but. 

“Who even are these kids?” It was the racoon that asked it - the  _ racoon _ , honestly Harley had seen entirely too many weird things for  _ that _ to shake him. 

“Who the hell are you?” Gwen snapped with the righteous fury of the people that had been abandoned. “Seriously, who the hell are all of you? Earth’s mightiest defenders until you fail.” 

“Like you could have done any better?” 

“Oh fuck off.” The chair under Gwen’s fingers creaked with her tightened grip and Stanley, shocking all of them, ran over to her side to hug her around the waist. Harley had a feeling Harry had told him to go. Stanley only listened to Harry. 

“I’m sorry,” Tony said to the room a whole and it broke something inside of Harley to hear it. 

Harry, it seemed, had no such qualms. “Peter Parker is dead because you decided to put a teenager in a superhero suit and encourage a delusion that his hands, and his hands alone, could keep the world from falling apart.” Something in Harley breaks then too, because Harry spoke with the tone of someone that had lost  _ everything _ and didn’t know how to carry on. His words were cruel and biting and dug in right where Tony didn’t need them to. It broke something inside of all of them to hear it. 

“Listen, kid, that’s enough.” James Rhodes, Tony’s best friend to a fault, put out a hand like it was going to stop the words from biting into damaged skin. 

“Is it? Because Peter Parker was sixteen years old.” Harry spoke with the fire of a CEO and clipped vowels of the righteously angry. “Half the population of the world and then another three hundred million as a result of accidents, fires, abandonment and general starvation. And that’s not counting the destruction of  _ another _ war on our soil that hasn’t been cleared away. I’m glad you’re all in one room and I’m glad that you’re back Stark but that does  _ nothing _ to bring back everyone that died on account of your inaction. You’re the  _ Avengers _ , do you know what it means to  _ avenge _ ? It means that you only act  _ after _ damage has been done. And here you all are with your thumbs up your ass looking like a room of kicked puppies instead of the heroes that the people that you should be  _ serving _ cried out for months ago.” 

It was perhaps the wrong thing to say but Harley couldn’t exactly fault Harry for his words. In fact, it was the most he had spoken in the months Harley had known him. It spoke of a pain of someone that had been crying out himself and hadn’t been answered. “Stark gets a free pass for being literally stuck in space but where the hell were the rest of you when your people needed you? Avengers my ass. What are you going to do when there’s nothing left to avenge?” 

  
  


\--

“Tell me about him?” 

“Who?” 

“Peter Parker.” 

“There’s nothing to tell.” 

“Bullshit. You’ve barely said a thing to me in three months but you tear down the Avengers because they dare mention his name. Who was he to you?” 

“A friend.” 

“Did you love him?” 

“Does it matter?” 

\--

Things weren’t back to normal a year later but they were… settled. In a way that only grief can settle in people. Stark Industries had built a massive tribute to the fallen - those that were dusted and those that died as a result. Harley had visited it exactly once and it had taken three hours to find his mother and sister’s names carved in stone. Harley cried for another four in front of their names and an old lady tossed a knit throw over his shoulders while he did it. “It’s the ones that don’t cry that we have to worry about.” She told him in that wise beyond their years voice that old ladies had. “They don’t heal right.” 

Harley wondered if Harry ever cried because he  _ knew _ Gwen did when she was training. She kept a picture of her father on her bedside table and kissed it goodnight every night. 

Things didn’t  _ change _ for them but… well perhaps they did because Stanley started reading out loud from his children’s books and Gwen taught them all to cook and, somehow, Harley ended up  _ kissing _ Harry on their first Christmas after everything. He’s not drunk - Harry doesn’t keep alcohol in the mansion and Harley doesn’t  _ want _ it. Harry’s lips tasted like the hot chocolate Stanley had made him and the kid actually slept in his own bedroom now and Gwen was out in her Ghost Spider suit giving hope to the people and... well Harley wasn’t even sure  _ when _ he had started looking at Harry Osborn as someone other than  _ Harry Osborn _ . 

It was somewhere along the line of him baking Harley a birthday cake and  _ smiling _ for the first time that Harley had ever seen. It was in late night conversations about  _ nothing _ at all and Harry refusing to allow Harley to put an AI in his suit or in  _ Gwen’s _ suit and, instead, being the voice in their head when they went out to help the people of New York. It was somewhere between Peter Parker and Abbie Keener and a key pressed into the palm of Harley’s hand. 

He was beautiful in a very conventional sense - Harry had a straight nose and freckles and blonde hair with just a twinge of ginger. He was trim and strong and  _ smart _ and Harley had heard him laugh exactly once and it felt like a religious experience. His lips tasted like hot chocolate and his tongue tasted like nirvana and Harley was  _ gone _ before he even knew what was happening. Perhaps that had always been the case. Perhaps Harley had  _ stayed _ simply because he had known that if he didn’t someone else would be the one being kissed by those lips. He let Harry bite at his lip and he kept one hand on his neck and the other on the small of his back as Harry pushed himself up to his knees on the leather of the couch. 

Gwen hadn’t pinged for information for a few hours, Stanley was fast asleep, and they didn’t have a tree or lights but save for the one Christmas memory Harley had of a full family he thought this was the best one he was ever going to be lucky enough to get. 

\--

They didn’t talk about it, that new  _ thing _ between them that was made up of late night kisses and sideways glances and Harry was more than okay with it. Afterall, he was a busy man - a busy…  _ young _ man, if he were to be honest. He had a city to help rebuild and Harley had a purple and gold suit to fly around the world in. The Avengers  _ had _ made a reappearance and the world hadn’t been very kind to them in response. They had their supporters but they also had their dissenters and Harry was more than happy to skirt the line of both. Harley said he needed to pick a side, Gwen said he already had. 

Tony Stark quit - resigned, stepped back, retired, whatever it was your particular brand of media was calling it - the moment he was declared healthy enough to return to duty if he so pleased. There wasn’t a press conference to state it or a PR move to accompany it but, instead, a very slow and obvious move on his part to change his social media presence from  _ Ironman _ to  _ soon to be father _ . He didn’t post about the group, changed his usernames from the aforementioned pseudonym, and carefully sidestepped any questions whatsoever about the Avengers, Spider-Man, or anything relating to such topics. 

Harry still didn’t like the man but, well, it was more than clear that Harley did. 

The thing about Harley Keener, was that he was the sort of person his father would have hated on sight. Which, Harry was prone to admit, was part of the attraction in the first place. That and, as much as Harry didn’t  _ want _ to admit it, he had always been curious about the components that exactly made up an Ironman suit. Tony Stark was someone that Norman Osborn had hated so deeply that the gut reaction passed its way onto Harry by default. Where Stark succeeded Norman tended to fail - every moment of positive press for  _ him _ was a moment of bad press for  _ Oscorp _ and if there was anything that Norman worshiped it was his own company. That being said, Harry was at least man enough to admit that Tony Stark was  _ smart _ and his tech was revolutionary. In comparison, Harley Keener was  _ brilliant _ .

He was also brash, and loud and he wore clothes that were years old and from department stores and he was  _ obsessed _ with fast food in the way that left grease stains on the corners of papers. He laughed at literally everything, smiled without reservation, told Harry stories under the stars about his sister and mother and  _ cows _ because he picked up on the subtle quirk of Harry’s lips when he did so. Harley Keener swore,  _ a lot _ , and he blasted old rock music and danced to Stanely’s favorite pop songs with him barefoot in the living room without shame. He got stains on  _ everything _ , whined over every little bruise and cut and scrape, finished online high school with a 4. _ 2 _ grade point average and chose to live with  _ Harry _ over  _ Tony Stark _ when they had barely known each other a year when it was offered. He was annoying and he didn’t come from a well known family or from money but from a small Tennessee town in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and Harry thought he loved him if he was the sort of man to admit that to anyone. 

The first time Harley presented them as a  _ them _ was to Tony Stark. 

Honestly, Harry had avoided the man as best he could - Harley went to dinners to wherever Stark had moved to, he argued with him, trained with him, and did  _ whatever _ with him and Harry was more than happy to stay  _ away _ from anything with the Avengers brand on it. He had seen the broken, war torn Avengers a total of three times after that first meeting - one had been when they had first re-entered society and Captain America - or whoever that war criminal was - showed up with Natasha Romanov to volunteer at FEAST. Martin Li had greeted them and kindly, in the no nonsense tone that reminded Harry rather cooly of Ben Parker, insisted that Harry be there for the meeting as well since the two of them had created the program together. It was awkward and stiff and Harry had the distinct impression that Natasha Romanov knew everything about him before he even had a chance to open his mouth that time around. So, instead, he kept his mouth shut. 

The other two times had been completely by accident - be it on the street or in a coffee shop because  _ apparently _ New York was just a base of operations for literally everyone that Harry even mildly disliked. Each time he pretended he didn’t see them and he didn’t try to strike up conversations with them. 

But  _ that _ time Harley had insisted, pale blue eyes eager and begging and he had even had the gall to trick  _ Stanley  _ into wanting to go too and Harry was absolutely hopeless under the combined weight of  _ both _ their gazed. And Gwen looked far too smug about it from where she had propped herself up onto the kitchen island to watch it all unfold. They had ambushed him after a day spent turning down things that Harry knew nothing about and all he really wanted to do was change out of the suit he was in and into a pair of too long sweatpants that he  _ thought _ actually didn’t belong to him. He threw his head back, pressed his fingers between his eyes and squeezed his nose. “ _ Fine _ .” 

Stanley cheered and hugged him around the legs (and Stanley was  _ warm _ and soft and sweet and something in a hundred years Harry never would have guessed he would have been allowed to touch, let alone care for). Harley though (Harley who had given so much and lost so much more than Harry could have dreamed of losing and bouncing back from), rested a soft, big and tanned hand on Harry’s hip and kissed him much more deeply than usual in front of other people. And Harry, for his part - who usually shied away from physical affection of any kind - (unless it was Stanley but Stanley was a kid and he  _ needed _ the affection) leaned  _ into _ it - he would later blame the exhaustion of a long day doing a job that was very much  _ not _ meant for a teenager - and kissed back. “Thanks, babe.” Harley said once he pulled away, brushed the tip of his nose against Harry’s and then pressed his lips  _ there _ too before hustling Stanley to bed. 

“Read me a story, Har?” Stanley asked before he was fully out of the kitchen and Harry nodded with a wink. He only felt the fire of a blush spread up the back of his neck and spill over onto his cheeks when he caught Gwen’s gaze over her big, orange coffee mug - filled with apple juice because they were classy like that. 

“What?” 

“ _ What _ ?” Gwen echoed. 

“ _ No _ .” 

She smiled. 

“ _ No _ , Gwen.” 

She laughed. 

\--

That was, probably, how Harry found himself suddenly spending every second Friday of the month at the Stark’s shiny new lake house upstate for what Stark called “family dinner”. Harry wasn’t part of a  _ family _ and he certainly would  _ never _ consider himself part of one that involved Tony Stark but he supposed it was nice to have plans that didn’t consist of work, community outreach, or patrolling the city. By the time Harry started spending any second around them they had already come neatly packaged with a baby to act as a bow. Morgan Stark was small, feisty, and prone to sickness. 

Tony Stark was  _ not _ a biologist of any sort and Bruce Banner with big green hands was much too scared to try and cuddle a newborn baby that still had the soft spot on top of her head.

The first time he showed up it was in his own car - Harley had taken the suit out there for some sort of maintenance apparently earlier that day - with Stanley strapped in his booster in the back. He had been on a four way conference call the entire three hour ride and had forgotten to change out of the dress pants and tie and fancy leather loafers in fear of being  _ late _ and making a bad impression when, honestly, Harry didn’t think he  _ cared _ about what impression he made on them. Especially after telling them all off the first time he ever met them. 

Stanley had grown a lot in the past year - for a kid that didn’t speak much at all when he first came home with Harry he had been picking things up rather quickly. Technically speaking, Stanley was Harry’s  _ ward _ which was a fancy way of saying that no one cared enough about him to pick him up and the state had entirely too many displaced kids to even bat an eye at a  _ kid _ taking in  _ another _ kid. “Vroom vroom!” He yelled when Harry unbuckled him and ran straight into Harley’s knees. 

He liked it a lot when Harley picked him up - he could reach the trees here if Harley sat him on his shoulders and Stanley had never seen a  _ lake _ before as far as Harry knew. The car locked with a beep and it was just as Harley pressed his lips to the spot under Harry’s ear that made him shiver that James Rhodes popped out from the doorway. He stared and Harry tried not to let it bother him - people  _ always _ stare when your last name was Osborn and, he supposed, it was fair that Rhodes was curious when Harry had gone out of his way to make it blatantly obvious that he didn’t even hold any respect for the Avengers. “And who’s this little guy?” He directed the question at Stanley but, well, the thing about kids from the apocalypse - especially street kids like Stanley - was that they didn’t  _ approve _ of attention from people they didn’t know. He wiggled so ferociously that Harley almost dropped him and gripped the wool of Harry’s pant leg so tightly that he honestly thought the fabric was in danger of ripping. Stanley leaned into the hand Harry reached behind himself to put atop his head and, when he picked him up, hid his face in the collar of his shirt, his toy car - purple with dinosaurs - clutched in his hand. 

“Stanley,” Harley said when it had grown silent enough to get awkward and it was  _ painfully _ obvious that Harry wasn’t going to speak anytime soon. “And uhm… this is Harry.” 

“Osborn.” Rhodes filled in the blank and Harry almost wanted to scream that he was  _ more _ than his father’s name, more than the company and what the media said. He had found Stanley and given him a home. He  _ funded _ Ghost Spider and whatever Harley was choosing to go out as and New York orphanages and displacement homes and shelters and then he reminded himself that he didn’t  _ care _ what someone like James Rhodes thought of him. Not when Harley Keener looked at him like he was actually worth something. 

“Colonel Rhodes.” Harry used his  _ board voice _ \- stiff and polite and it sounded much too much like Norman Osborn for Harry to be  _ comfortable _ but it fit on his vocal chords easily at this point. 

“You don’t quite match the atmosphere, kid.” Rhodes said with a smile that was all bite but was meant to look disarming. 

Harry raised his chin a bit more and smiled back the same. “Some of us have a job to do that requires us to wear more than a metal suit, sir.” 

“ _ Okay _ ,” Harley clapped his hands in the tension filled space and, with a hand low on Harry’s back, pushed gently forward. “As fun as this is,  _ dinner _ ?” 

Harry subscribed to the belief that something was only awkward if you made it so and with Stanley basically doing his best impersonation of a koala bear and refusing to leave Harry’s side that meant that he didn’t have the time or energy to make it anything more than vaguely uncomfortable. Pepper Potts - Stark, now, actually - was nice and radiant even  _ if _ she had a newborn in her care. Tony Stark looked healthier but older than he ever had at the head of the table. Bruce Banner was big and green and basically the Hulk with glasses at that point in time. James Rhodes was stiff and tired around his edges. And Natasha Romanov was staring him down the same as she did the last time she met him with that look that said she knew  _ exactly _ what he was doing even if he didn’t. It was crowded and loud and, aside from Harley, no one actually tried to talk to him. 

Until  _ after _ dinner. 

Until Stanley had finally made friends with Pepper and gone with her to find craft supplies, Harley had retreated to the garage to take a look at the car that Rhodes had driven in that was having engine trouble, Banner and Romanov were outside stargazing and Stark, with his little baby girl in his arms, was left in the room alone with Harry. 

Tony Stark had a picture of Peter Parker on the shelf above his sink and something about it  _ viscerally  _ bothered Harry. It was, perhaps, no different from the shrines on almost every street corner to those that were lost - or maybe it was the same as the posts on social media depicting how much survivors missed their lost loved ones. Harry didn’t like the idea that it was the same exact thing as the picture he had on the bookshelf in his office of him and Peter when they were five when the world was still kind. 

The baby wouldn’t stop crying and she looked a sight with her little red cheeks and small mouth open wide to scream at the injustice of whatever she was feeling at that moment. It was clearly bothering Stark, even if it  _ wasn’t _ bothering Harry. “She has a tooth coming in.” Harry said from the opposite couch. 

“What?” Stark, with the wild look of a new parent, demanded over her crying. “She’s too young.” 

“She’s four months old,” Harry tried to look unaffected but, at Stark’s blank stare, he pushed himself to his feet and ran a finger under the faucet until he was clean and pressed it inside of her mouth. He found the lump on her gums easy enough and  _ pressed _ \- gentle but firm and her little tongue flicked against the tip of his pointer finger before she settled. Stark stared at the two of them as though Harry had just performed life saving magic. “Babies can start teething from four to seven months. Frozen carrots are safe for her to suck on but don’t leave them for more than like ten minutes at a time. Or get a teething ring at the grocery store.” 

“Doctors are behind on check ups.” 

“Makes sense when half the population died.” 

“How was it here… after.” 

Harry looked at Morgan instead of at Stark - she didn’t really look like either of her parents, but perhaps that was the innocence in all children born during the apocalypse. He shrugged. “How was it anywhere? We didn’t get spared just because we’ve dealt with more great tragedies in ten years.” 

Stark was silent for a long moment and Harry knew enough about him to know just how  _ unusual _ that was. He was like Peter in that way, Harry supposed. That was probably why they had gotten along - never a silent moment between the two of them. “Your father…” 

Harry shrugged and  _ hated _ that, with the way he was standing, he could clearly see the smile on Peter Parker’s face as he held up an internship certificate. He looked so happy - Harry didn’t think he had  _ ever _ been as happy as Peter was in that picture. “You can always get orajel at the store too - rub it on her gums as it gets worse.” 

“He never mentioned you.” Sharply, it felt as though Stark had just plunged a knife shallowly into his chest. 

“Why would he? It was years ago.” 

“Yeah but you knew he was Spider-Man.” 

“He didn’t know.” 

“You loved him.” 

“Osborns don’t  _ do _ love.” 

He could feel Stark’s eyes on him, digging into the side of his face as though in the end of the world  _ he _ was the saddest thing he had ever seen. Or perhaps he was looking at him like he saw a ghost but, whatever it was, Harry didn’t bother staying. He removed his finger, wiped it on his pants and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “My condolences.” 

“Kid.” 

“I’m not a  _ kid _ , Stark.” Harry turned sharply and looked at the floor instead of him. “It’s been fun, let’s not do it again.” 

They  _ did _ do it again.

\--

Harley could safely say that he didn’t  _ expect _ to fall so fast and so hard for Harry Osborn but, in his defense, the guy was  _ actually _ a certifiable genius. Not many people would  _ want _ to run a company at sixteen, yet alone  _ excel _ in it. Not many people looked that good in a suit, either, but really what did Harley know about  _ that _ . Also, Harley could safely say that he had  _ never _ kissed someone that kissed as well as Harry Osborn did. Had never met someone so kind, either. So sharp with wit and class and poise. He supposed he had been in love since that day in the rubble that felt so  _ long _ ago when it was still so close. 

The world was as close to  _ normal  _ now that it was ever going to be again, Harley thought, with an online high school diploma and a small celebration with him, Gwen, Harry, Stanley and Gwen’s new friend Mary Jane. Tony was doing something bigger to celebrate that weekend at the lake house and Harley  _ knew _ him and Harry were on very rocky ground but they seemed to be moving away from painful banter to something close to playful. The group of them hadn’t chosen to celebrate their birthdays - they were too much like a punch to the face with a twenty ton car without family. But Harley knew when Harry’s was - February 12th - and when Gwen’s was - November 23rd - and when it was  _ his _ he had woken up to chocolate pancakes (not chocolate chips but  _ chocolate _ ) and a painstakingly wrapped present from Stanley. They were all eighteen - and three and a half - and they were  _ maybe _ a little high because Mary Jane had scored some… well,  _ mary jane _ and it was a day to  _ celebrate _ wasn’t it? 

He thought his mother would have been proud of him - not for getting high but for graduating. Thought Abbie would have loved Stanley. 

Harley thought they even would have approved of Harry. 

Which was, really, the important thing there. 

Stanley had fallen asleep on the couch and so had the girls, one on top of the other (and  _ that _ was something Harley was going to have a field day teasing Gwen about in the morning) and it was just  _ them _ . And Harley hadn’t known him that long but Harry had literally given him a home. Was literally funding the rebuilding of New York and  _ lives _ and Harley  _ loved him _ before he even knew that it was  _ love _ that he was feeling. “Hey,” Harley thought it was, perhaps, a little awkward to have been watching Harry watch Stanley but with the cloud in his mind he couldn’t find a reason to care. Instead when Harry turned Harley didn’t even have the filter to stop himself from calling him beautiful. 

He was even  _ more _ beautiful when he colored and did he color  _ easily _ . Harley wove his fingers between the belt loops on Harry’s much too expensive jeans and  _ tugged _ until they were pressed tightly together - chest to chest, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. 

It was a testament to how _out_ of his right mind Harry was that he didn’t stop him or protest more than a noise but Harley was enough _in_ his right mind to not push his luck. He stopped just a breath away from him, foreheads pressed together and lips mere inches apart. He could feel the heat coming off Harry’s skin in waves, wanted to memorize the way his breath curled out around Harley’s mouth and wanted to chase the path of his tongue as it licked at his lips and left them moist. Harley watched the way his dark eyelashes fluttered over the freckles on his cheeks when he breathed in and felt the way his fingers curled into the skin of his back at the base of his spine but Harley wouldn’t _do_ _anything_ unless he did it first. 

Harley was raised to be a gentleman, afterall. And after the way the world had taken consent out of the equation with the hand they had dealt Harry Osborn he figured he could, at least, give him that much. 

It was  _ barely _ a kiss - not even really a brush of lips but just, instead, a press closer into each other’s bodies and Harley felt wound up enough to  _ snap _ . It was a little embarrassing how quickly Harley had allowed himself to be turned on - they hadn’t even  _ done _ anything yet but with one touch he was already half hard and stirring against Harry’s leg. Embarrassing, except it wasn’t. Not really. Not when he was all but pushed backwards until his back hit the wall of the kitchen - the door swinging shut behind them, and  _ then _ they were kissing. 

The ensuing action was quick and messy and not at all romantic or anything like Harley imagined it would be but, then again, neither was the rest of their relationship. Harley hadn’t even taken him on a  _ date _ yet. They already basically had a  _ kid _ (because fuck if Stanley wasn’t theirs, fuck it they had raised him to who he was now and he called Harry  _ daddy _ when he was tired or sick). But they were also eighteen and  _ high _ and when Harley crawled into Harry’s bed that same night after a shower he wasn’t told to leave. 

And well… they had plenty of time to take it slow and sensual and romantic if they had survived the end of the world. Harley had plenty of time to lick the sweat from his skin and figure out that the spot under Harry’s left ear and slightly behind was guaranteed to make him gasp and to map out the constellation of freckles that covered most of his skin. 

So if they rushed the first few times whose business was it but their own. 

\--

The first time Harley really learned anything about Norman Osborn aside from his name and what Tony had to say was when he was visiting Harry at Oscorp with lunch in a brown bag and a weekend without Stanley (he had  _ insisted _ on staying at the lake house for the night and Harry might not had trusted many of the Avengers but he trusted Harley’s judgement). Stanley had recently started calling Tony Popa - P o p a because he  _ refused _ to accept that there be an a instead of an o and insisted they were all wrong. The first time he had done it Harley had thought Tony was going to cry and that  _ Harry _ was going to hit a tree, but that could have had more to do with the way Stanley had just  _ jumped _ on his foot and less to do with the word. 

The first time Harley had really decided that removing Norman Osborn from Harry’s life was probably the best thing the end of the world had done was later that same day when he said “I love you” and Harry had simply  _ stared _ . “You don’t have to say it back.” Harley said in a rush, nervous beyond hope because he had  _ thought _ that it was the right thing to say. 

He had _thought_ that hearing _I love you_ was a good thing but the way Harry was looking at him told Harley that, perhaps, it wasn’t _always_. “I mean, I… I won’t take it back. I _love_ you and I know it’s crazy and weird and _fast_ but I do.” But, was it fast? He hadn’t told Harry he loved him before even if he _had_ been _in love with him_ since they first met. Not that he had known it then, no, Harley hadn’t had a _clue_ that he had felt even an attraction until things started settling in the world. They had been dating - though Harley noticed how Harry carefully sidestepped any mention of _boyfriend_ or _partner_ in favor of his name (“ _What is he to you?” “Harley.”_ _“Yeah, but what is he?” “He’s Harley.) -_ for close to two years by then. And that, well, that got Harley thinking didn’t it? 

He had never heard Harry say it to  _ anyone _ . Not even Stanley. It was always something different - a touch of his hand or a smile just for him or the way he gave his undivided attention and called him  _ brilliant _ like Harley was some great work of art to admire. He said it in upgrades to suits and stitching wounds over the coffee table with gentle, precise fingers and halfway to a Doctorate between work just to be able to properly help. He  _ knew _ Tony noticed it too - he knew it because Tony never called Harry his  _ boyfriend _ but instead referred to him only by name ( _ “Bring Harry over.” “Have Harry look at this.” “How’s Harry doing?” _ ). 

Harry hated being seen as something that belonged to someone else. 

That wasn’t his problem with  _ I love you _ . 

He had kissed Harley hard on the lips with a hand weaved in his tie to shut him up after he had rambled about  _ not needing to say it back _ for close to five minutes. And when he pulled back the only thing Harley could think of was  _ I love you and you love me too _ . “Osborns don’t do love.” Harry said the words like they were a secret, or a challenge, or something darker and deeper and  _ promising _ to the world as a whole. “But I do  _ adore  _ you, Harley Keener.” 

\--

“Do you think he would have liked me?” 

“My dad?”

“Yeah.” 

“Harley, he barely liked  _ me _ .” 

\--

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Harley tried not to find it too funny how absolutely  _ terrified _ most of the Avengers were of his twenty one year old partner. Boyfriend? Fiance? Roommate? Harry. It had been a family dinner when Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanov showed up at the lake house demanding to speak to Tony about something important. Harley had gone along for moral support - but also because he  _ was _ the one wearing the tech since Tony had retired. 

Tony had said no, of course, until it had meant yes. 

Harley wondered how different  _ his _ life would have been if he had met the Peter Parker guy that Tony was thinking of risking time travel for. He also wondered how different his life would have been if Harry wasn’t as  _ stubborn _ as he was now. 

The thing was, Harry and Tony were very alike even if they didn’t want to admit it. Harry was just…  _ mildly _ more terrifying in Harley’s overt opinion. Where Tony had teenage rebellion Harry had a company and responsibility. “Because of the quantum repercussions of adding back in half the population?” Tony asked absentmindedly from where he stood in front of the holoscreen he had pulled up to work with. 

“ _ No _ ,” Harley ran a hand down Harry’s back and kissed the top of his head before settling in behind him. “Because of the socio-economic repercussions of suddenly tossing back in more people than the world can handle at its current capacity.” And, well, Harley presumed Harry was  _ right _ \- Harry was always  _ right _ even when Harley really wished he wouldn’t be. The world had adjusted after five years. People had gotten remarried, had moved and occupied old space. Taken jobs and homes and  _ lives _ that weren’t theirs originally. As much as everyone hated to admit it, poverty had gone down, cultures had pulled together, starvation wasn’t nearly as big of a problem as it had been before and… well the world wasn’t  _ better _ but it wasn’t  _ as bad _ . “Think about it: if you go back in time and bring everyone back we’re suddenly going to have  _ two _ presidents. We’re going to have at least two people fighting over property and spouses and kids and jobs and whose side is going to win? Because  _ technically _ the current owner and the previous are both entitled to such things.” 

“If you had the chance,” Tony said slowly, a thumb brushing over Peter Parker’s face in the picture. “You wouldn’t bring him back?” 

Abbie. 

Harley would bring Abbie back in a heartbeat. 

But they didn’t get to choose who came back in the end. “What if it just takes the other half?” He asked at the same time that Harry said, 

“Not everyone that was taken was  _ good _ .” And Harley  _ knew _ he was talking about his father even without him saying it. 

Harry was thinking of things in terms of his own situation. If Tony  _ did _ invent time travel and if the Avengers  _ did _ bring everyone back then Norman Osborn would be back too. And then where would Harry be? Would he still be CEO? Still have access to the funds in his account? Would Stanley still be theirs if his biological parents came knocking for him? “Not everyone that was taken was  _ bad _ , Harry.” Tony said in response. 

“And you’re a smart man, Tony.” Harry countered. “But you’re not  _ god _ .” 

Tony still did it.


	2. After

The thing with the end of the world was that it really hadn’t  _ felt _ like the end of the world. 

That didn’t mean that Harry wanted to relive it again. 

The thing with theoretical time travel was that there were  _ a host _ of problems when it came to implementing such an action. Most of it all boiled down to one movie quote that Harry kept hung up and framed on his office wall - “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they  _ could _ they didn’t stop to think if they  _ should _ .” Bless Jurassic Park (not only for fueling Harry’s childhood obsession with dinosaurs but for setting him up for a lifetime of thinking of the consequences of every single scientific discovery he  _ or _ OSCORP - or anyone else, really - made). Suffice to say, the list of negative consequences well outweighed the list of positive. 

At least in his mind. 

“Pessimism gets you nowhere.” Gwen said from her perch on his desk, holding up a magnifying glass to her eye so that it was blown wider than it usually was. Her blonde hair was no longer the short, choppy thing she had worn for the first few years but, instead, stick straight and long past her shoulders. She tended to wear it up in a cheerleader’s high ponytail, now with her bangs combed perfectly over her forehead. For five years she had all but been his shadow. 

Five years. 

It was hard to think that it was both  _ only _ five years and  _ already _ five years. Saying he didn’t remember what life was like  _ before _ would be a lie so Harry never bothered to bring it up. “You and Harley have the optimism held down tight.” Harry slowly, and with steadier hands than he had expected to have, lowered the glass slide he was looking at and jotted down in pencil what he had noticed just moments before. “One of us has to be pragmatic.” 

Gwen snorted - not unkindly. Gwen had many different kinds of noises and none of them were really meant to be offensive. She snorted when she found something funny or insulting or sometimes just because she  _ felt _ like snorting. She ooed and awed and clicked her tongue if something annoyed her. When she thought of something wonderful or made a discovery of some sort she would clear her throat and squeak. Gwen didn’t use a lot of  _ words _ but, then again, neither did Harry. 

He supposed that was why they managed to fit so well together and why he had never asked her to leave. The mansion seemed awfully cold without her there and Harry had been so lonely for so long and he hadn't even noticed until she had sat in his presence. 

The best relationships, Harry theorized, were born out of moments of pure agony. 

Or, well, at least his were. 

“Pragmatic.” Gwen said after snort as though the word itself was a joke. Harry hadn’t meant it as one. 

You see, Harley was all for time travel. He understood Harry’s reservations and reasoning why  _ he _ wasn’t but Harley could only see as far as  _ Abbie _ . And Harry couldn’t blame him - he didn’t  _ have _ a sibling that he had lost and Harry had been cursed with the foresight of  _ the world _ . Because the world  _ had _ healed. It was messy and cauterized and scabbed over but it had  _ healed _ all the same. Harry hadn’t lost anyone he couldn’t live without - he had lived  _ years _ with Peter Parker in his life and then years without him. He had lived without Norman Osborn breathing down his back. And, if he was being with at least himself, it was a weight off his shoulders to  _ not _ have his father’s gaze holding him down and examining every decision he made. 

_ Abuse _ , Martin Li had said while they served the needy at Feast one day (mashed potatoes, country fried steak, and green beans smothered in gravy),  _ is something so many people don’t understand. It’s okay not to miss those that hurt you. _

Harry had never spoken it aloud - it was no one’s business what had gone on behind closed doors and what he fought with in his mind. Still, he thought Harley knew. Thought Gwen did. Was more than happy to admit that Stanley  _ didn’t _ . 

“The consequences.” Harry said because they had heard his opinion on it too many times to not be able to recite it themselves. 

Gwen clicked her tongue. “Are always going to be the consequences, Har.” 

She snagged the back of his lab coat as he tried to walk by, curled the fabric in her hand and held hard enough that if Harry wanted to get away he would have to either shrug out of the coat or jerk and make a hole. Gwen had been Ghost Spider for five years now and she had done a lot of good. She had confessed only once that it was during the mess at the end of the world that she had been bitten by a radioactive spider down in his father’s labs. The walls had collapsed shortly afterwards and, as far as either of them knew, crushed every experiment on spiders or animals when the building had fallen.  _ She _ knew about consequences. 

“What right do the Avengers have to play god?” 

“Is that really the problem here?” 

Harry thought about it because that was what she wanted of him.  _ Was _ it really the problem? It was one of them, for sure. Removing half the population of the universe was terrible and an act of a being with a heartbeat and mind. Thanos had thought of the consequences of his actions and was more than willing to reap them. The Avengers had done what they did best - they  _ avenged _ and cut off his head but what good had it done in the end? Half the population was still gone, their ghosts were still echoing through the chasms of their homes, their absence still felt. The simple fact remained that vengeance never got anyone anywhere. It was all over the books Harry had read as a child - revenge was  _ never _ the solution. 

The world couldn’t blame them for their actions though. They had cried out for someone to be held responsible and the Avengers had delivered. 

Now though, five years later, and the Avengers were just picking at a scab instead of letting it fall off. Even as a child Harry had known the dangers of doing that - it would bleed again and again and never fully heal if you kept scratching at it and exposing the new skin. 

And were the Avengers thinking with their  _ minds _ or their hearts? Was it simply that they had never learned how to let go of the past and their mistakes? 

Had they even stopped to think about the fact that  _ time travel _ could be a bigger mistake than one they had already made? 

Harry felt very old and very young all at once. 

He wished he could live with Harley’s boundless optimism. He wished that he could have Gwen’s ability to compartmentalize. He wished he was a  _ hero _ when he was merely a human. 

“Or is the problem that you don’t want  _ him _ back?” 

Harry jerked back as though stung and his jacket, true to her grip, ripped with a loud screech through the room. Gwen didn’t look away from him even as his eyes stung from what felt very much like a betrayal. He couldn’t think of the words to argue his point because there weren’t  _ words _ for that. She wasn’t wrong, anyway. He  _ didn’t _ want his father back. If Harry could go his entire life with never seeing him again he would die happy. “Removing the choice from the people that it’s going to effect makes the  _ heroes _ no better than the  _ villain _ .” He said with a gaze on the window outside. The world was blue and green and  _ alive _ and when Harry was in it he felt as close to the same as he ever had. 

“Everyone’s a hero in their own mind.” Gwen stated after a long sigh but her eyes didn’t move from the side of his face. 

“And everyone’s a villain in someone’s.” 

“I’m not going to argue philosophy with you.” She kicked her shoes against the side of his desk and scratched at her nose. “But think about all the good it could do.” 

“Think of all the bad.” 

“I think you’re hardwired to think of the bad.” Gwen huffed with a crooked smile. “I think if you force yourself to think of the good for once it might do you some good.” 

\--

If Harley thought about it it shouldn’t have surprised him to find a pros and cons list tacked up on Harry’s bulletin board in the room that doubled as Harry’s home office and the nightly activities of Gwen and Harley. It was the sort of person he was, after all. Harry liked to list off every possible outcome of a situation and decision before actually following through with them. Harry hadn’t even tried to hide it so, really, that meant that it didn’t cross his mind that anything bad would happen if Harley or Gwen found it and read it. 

Harley ran his grease stained fingertips over the bumps and grooves of Harry’s round and careful half cursive - each letter connected to the other and mostly it was in lowercase unless it was a name he was writing. Harley particularly liked the way Harry wrote  _ his _ name - the H was sloped and disconnected from the rest that flowed together in a long line of  _ arley _ . 

He was on both the pros and cons columns and Harry hadn’t bothered to write explanations underneath to clarify. 

Harley thought he understood. 

If Harry said  _ yes _ to time travel then  _ Harley  _ would say yes without reservation. If he said  _ yes _ then Harley would have had  _ hope _ that he didn’t have before even though Harley was a generally hopeful person. Because  _ yes _ meant that Harley might see Abbie again. It meant that he might be able to feel the press of his mother’s lips on his forehead again. It meant Harley would have a  _ home _ . 

But damn if that didn’t feel like a stab to Harley’s stomach to think. 

Because he  _ had _ a home. 

And then Harley thought he understood why his name was under the cons. 

It was something that Harry never said aloud but Harley had learned in five years regardless (there was a lot that Harry never said aloud but whispered into soft touches and sharp looks and pursed lips).  _ Not everyone the end of the world had taken was good _ . Harley understood it on a visceral level - Thanos’s half the population snap didn’t discriminate. It had taken good, bad and in between and while plenty had suffered loss there were some that had been liberated by the event. 

Harry didn’t  _ talk _ about his father (not like he sometimes talked about Peter Parker or Oliver his old body guard or Laura his father’s secretary).  _ Harley _ talked about  _ his _ father more than Harry talked about anything  _ before _ five years ago. It didn’t take a genius intellect to know that Harry hadn’t been  _ happy _ before. But, unfortunately for Harley, he  _ did _ have a genius intellect so the small things stood out much louder than normal. For example, Harry had written  _ Norman _ under the cons list and then crossed it out so viciously that it had ripped through the paper. 

None of that was why  _ Harley’s _ name was there though. 

Other than the worry that Harry would no longer suffice for his home. 

Gwen was there too, Stanley a bigger and more prominent worry and Harley felt it too even if he didn’t say it outloud. Stanley fit for all of the kids that had found homes outside of the end of the world but there were still plenty more that still had nowhere to go. 

Harry really  _ had _ listed it all. 

The cons had been easier for him to write - Harley could tell in the easy swirls of the ends of his words. The pros had started and stopped multiple times and Harley could see him in his mind’s eye sitting at that very desk in front of the wall of monitors he had set up to be Gwen and Harley’s eyes, ears and brain from a safe distance away tapping the tip of his pen against the desk and struggling to rewire his mind to think like the rest of them. 

( _ Peter _ was written as one of the first pros, right under Harley, and he felt a perverse thrill that he had come  _ before _ the person that Harry missed most in the world.)

The lists were equal. The exact same amount of pros and cons. 

“Dad!” Stanley collided with the back of his legs and Harley let out an  _ oomph _ before righting himself, hand on the back of Stanley’s dark brown hair. 

“Hey kiddo!” Harley swung him up onto his hip - Stanley was still  _ small _ for his age, seven years old and sticky fingered from the snack he had just had. “What’s up?” 

“Daddy said it’s your turn to cook.” 

“What about Auntie Gwen?” 

“She cooked  _ three  _ days ago.” 

“ _ Three _ ?” Harley tickled his stomach and when Stanley smiled at him he felt that same gnawing worry that he knew Harry felt every day. If they did this and it  _ worked _ this might no longer be their life anymore. 

If they did this and  _ failed _ … Harley didn’t know what would happen. 

“What are you reading?” Stanley tried to grab the list but Harley shoved it into his pocket instead of allowing the grabby hands. 

“Let’s go make dinner, little hunger monster.” 

Harley wrote in his own answer under pros after dinner - jotted it down quickly and didn’t give himself time to think whether it was right to do so or not.

Harry never said anything about it.

\--

**_Pros_ **

  * _Stanley_


  * Harley


  * Peter


  * Gwen


  * Families


  * Rewrite trauma


  * Second chances


  * Potentially fix what shouldn’t have been broken


  * Hope


  * Not everyone it took was bad



**_Cons_ **

  * _Harley_


  * Norman (strikethrough)


  * Families


  * Homeless population


  * Economy


  * Conflicts


  * Legal ramifications


  * Paradox theory


  * Home



\---

In the end, Harry didn’t say  _ yes _ so much as he didn’t bother trying to stop them. The problem was very obviously wearing thin in his mind every time it was brought up, but he didn’t say anything about it unless he was directly asked his opinion. Their little family traveled upstate to the Avengers Compound ( _ four _ of them because Gwen wasn’t about to let Harley do anything without her and Tony said they  _ needed _ Harry on the team there was  _ no way _ they were leaving Stanley behind) in Harry’s overly expensive electric SUV instead of Harley’s old Camero. They met up with the Avengers - because Harley didn’t think of himself as an Avenger and he knew Gwen didn’t either, they were just  _ people _ working on fixing mistakes in costumes - just outside of the doors. Or, well, Gwen and Stanley did while rolling his dinosaur suitcase behind him. Harley watched as Tony bent down to give Stanley a hug and he looked  _ old _ in the same way that Harry looked old - they had the lines on their face of a life that wasn’t as easy as everyone thought it was. 

Money only made it easier to fix broken things. 

_ People _ weren’t things.

“You don’t have to be here for this.” Harley reminded him with a hand on the back of his neck. He squeezed just enough for it to be grounding and his lithe fingers trailed down to the collar of his t-shirt when Harry leaned forward to rest his forehead on the steering wheel. It was one of the only times Harley had really ever  _ seen _ Harry admit how much a situation was stressing him out. But Harley was good at reading him - Harry hadn’t been sleeping well, he had bags the size of suitcases under his blue eyes, he was dressed much more casually than he usually did unless they were lounging around the house, and his mouth had that  _ set _ to it that told him without words that Harry was upset. Not at him, at the situation as a whole. Harley glanced out of the window, Tony was looking in with curious eyes but when Harley waved them inside it was Gwen that grabbed Stanley’s hand and Tony’s arm and jerked her head towards the door. “You and Stanley can just turn around and go home.” 

The look Harry shot him wasn’t  _ poisonous _ but it wasn’t kind either. The silver of the stud in his ear glinted in the sunlight that streamed through the car window. “I just need a moment.” 

“The team will survive without you.” Harley needed him to hear it though. Needed him to understand it. 

If it was too much Harry had every right to turn around and leave. 

He had done enough for the broken world, Harley thought. He had financed their rebuilding, had donated fifty percent of his own income towards those in need, had given the survivors so many parts of himself without even noticing. He had done enough. He deserved to stay out of a few fights. 

Plus, this wasn’t  _ their  _ war. “You’re my team.” Harry said blandly, forehead braced on the leather of the steering wheel and blue eyes glancing at Harley from their corners. “If you’re here so am I.” 

It was how Harry said  _ I love you _ and Harley had known him long enough to recognize that. He had also known Harry long enough to know that there was no convincing him otherwise even if he wanted to. Truth be told, Harley was more than happy to have Harry with him - working with Harry was refreshing and grounding. He had the uncanny ability of reminding Harley that he was simply a human in a metal costume while simultaneously encouraging him to make smart, well thought out decisions. Plus, in Harley’s honest opinion, having Harry in their ear talking them through what he was lovingly calling the Time Heist would only improve their chances. He was always five steps ahead and three steps back and Harley didn’t think he would be able to do this without him. 

But he would have managed. 

If Harry needed him to. 

“Come here.” Harley trailed his fingertips down to the curve of Harry’s chin - traced the line of invisible stubble and the bow of his lips. Up close Harry’s freckles were almost the color of his hair, dotted across the bridge of his nose like a secret and Harley wanted to draw a line to connect each and every one of them and see what picture they revealed underneath. “I love you too.” He whispered in the space between the two of them, Harry’s breath curling around his own and falling out in a sigh when Harley finally pressed their lips together. 

He kissed like he had done it with more than just Harley before, or perhaps it was that Harley was the water that he needed to survive in the desert. Harley supposed he hadn’t gotten a lot of affection growing up - he still seemed uneasy to reach out and  _ take _ whatever Harley was willing to give. Harry closed a hand around the edge of his shirt to hold him in place and Harley didn’t  _ want _ to break away until Harry had taken his fill. He traced the path of his finger just moments before with his tongue, stirred against the little noises that were pulling from  _ one _ of their throats, and tried to have enough sense to stroke a hand through soft strands of hair and  _ not _ pull him over the center console and into his lap. Because Harry gave so easily even if Harley didn’t ask and they were very obviously still young men even if one was playing superhero and the other running a company. 

His lungs constricted and Harry finally touched at skin and Harley  _ hated _ that he pulled away and yet they were in a car in front of a facility full of Avengers that had probably checked up on them already and seen more than Harley had wanted them to. “I’m not going anywhere.” He said with what he hoped was barely noticeable strain. 

The tight upwards turn of Harry’s lips told Harley more than his words could - he didn’t believe him but he wanted to. “We should go inside before Tony decides to make Stan a mini suit.” 

“You say that as though he doesn’t already have one made for Stan  _ and _ Morgan.” Harry wrinkled his nose at the words and it was perhaps the youngest he had ever looked in the driver's seat of a car, hair mused and shirt rumpled. Harley laughed despite himself. He laid his hand out in the center console, palm up. “Together?” 

Harry studied him the same way he studied papers brought over by Martin Li or members of the board. He looked at Harley as though he were a problem he just couldn’t figure out yet and he must have found  _ something _ in the side of Harley’s face because he let out a slow, even breath and folded his hand on top, fingers weaving through Harley’s own and squeezing twice before letting it drop. “Together.” 

\--

The idea of the Time Heist was ridiculously convoluted (and Harry  _ hated _ that Harley’s nickname for it was actually  _ sticking _ in his mind). The simple act of thinking of all of the implications of what they were about to do only caused  _ more _ pain to explode across his temples. “If you’re working off the multiverse theory who even  _ knows _ what all of you going back and stealing things from these individual times is going to  _ do _ to the timeline.” Harry bemoaned for what had to be the tenth time just that afternoon. 

“Who’s to say that us stealing them isn’t what puts all of  _ this _ ,” Gwen motioned to the room around them but meant, inversely, the reality they were currently stuck participating in. “In motion.” She said it  _ just _ to get Harry to groan and groan he did, much more dramatically than Harry ever tended to do things and he fell back against the couch in pure mental exhaustion. 

Tony, from where he stood with Doctor Banner looking at schematics and blueprints, smiled in what Harry hoped was good humor and not actually mocking. “Trust me kid,” Tony said absentmindedly, “Trying to think of the implications across the multiverse of all of our actions will only start you on a path that rivals Hot Tub Time Machine.” 

“That movie is  _ not _ one we should aspire to be like.” 

“Attaboy.” 

“Back to the Future?” Gwen piped up unhelpfully from her perch on the arm of the couch Harry was lounging on. She nudged him with her foot and he shoved it away with a glower. 

“You want to go back in time to almost bang your own mother?” Harry quipped without thinking and Gwen laughed, loud and startled. 

Harry’s lips twitched. “I can’t do that to Mary Jane.” She bemoaned. “But really, you’re thinking too hard, Mister Osborn and it is driving all of us insane.” 

“You’re passing your neuroticism onto Stan,” Tony twisted a screwdriver in the palm of his hand. “Kid asked me if it was okay to take a toy back from Morgan if she had taken it without asking in the first place.” 

“What did you tell him?” 

“Only if he asked nicely.” 

“That’s ridiculous,” Harry scoffed. “She stole it first and it’s  _ his _ toy.” 

“Stop it,” Tony bonked his head lightly with the plastic handle with a scowl. “You’re ruining a perfectly good Stan.” 

“And you’re raising a little thief.” 

It was all said without heat, of course. Harry adored Morgan Stark even if he wasn’t on the best terms with her parents and Tony melted whenever Stanley gave him a hug around the shoulders. Bar whatever lingering problems Harry had with Tony Stark and the rest of the Avengers after five years he thought he could, perhaps, understand them all a little bit more. They hadn’t hid out of malice even if it had felt that way at the time but simply out of shame and mourning. 

Harry  _ wished _ that hiding had been an option. “Where  _ is _ Stanley?” Doctor Banner asked, big and green and really a good man at heart despite his terrifying size. Stanley, for all of his shyness, had never been afraid of him and, instead, enjoyed swinging from his arms and clamouring for a piggy back ride at any given time. 

“Making lunch with Harley.” Harry said with a swipe at a notification on his watch (Mary Jane had posted another article to counter the Bugle’s attack on Ghost Spider and Iron Lad and Harry, mentally, told himself to read it over later).

“For all of us?” Tony asked hopefully. 

Harry snorted. “I thought you weren’t  _ old _ , Iron Man. Make your own food.” 

Tony scoffed, Gwen laughed and Harry thought that, perhaps, this was the happiest he had ever been. 

\--

The night before the Time Heist was set to go off Harley found himself lying back against the soft down pillows and scratchy wool blanket on the bed him and Harry were borrowing and looking up at the ceiling as though it held the answer to all of the problems in the world. Genuinely, Harley was terrified of the very  _ real _ possibility that things could go wrong. They had all been paired off and Harley wasn’t exactly  _ happy _ to be separated from the rest of what he considered  _ his _ team. Gwen was paired with Thor and Rocket, Harry with Clint and Natasha, and Harley with the rest - Tony, Steve and Scott. They hadn’t really spoken of plans other than get in, get the stone, and get out and Harley  _ must _ have grown accustomed to Harry’s obsessive need to plan everything because the  _ lack _ of one was irking him. 

What did they know about these stones? About the alien locations they were sending the others to? Or what would happen if they happened to interact with their past selves? Would the universe break? Or converge? Or was it even possible to  _ do _ what they were about to attempt? And was it  _ really _ a good idea to bring everyone back? To rewrite the fabric of the universe that they were stuck within simply to save lives that already had been lost? 

“You’re not the type to overthink.” Harry leaned against the door he had just pulled shut, the light of the hallway streaming in under the crack of the door at the bottom. His sweats hung low off his hips, his shirt a bit too big in the shoulders (because it was  _ Harley’s _ , he noticed after a moment) and hair damp from the shower still. “This relationship only has room for  _ one _ neurotic person and I have that locked in tight.” 

Harley huffed out a laugh despite himself and sat up, the springs creaking softly with his movement. “You got in my head.” He shook out his hair until the short strands of blonde brushed against the top of his forehead. “I mean, you’re  _ always _ in my head but…” 

Harry shrugged even if his cheeks colored a bit at the words. “I get it.” He scratched at his cheek. “Sorry for whatever thoughts I’ve made invade your mind.” 

Harley didn’t know how to tell him not to apologize because, try as he might, he still wanted to be the overly optimistic child he had been back when this had all started. He could close his eyes and picture Abbie underneath the Tennessee sun, could hear his mother humming in the kitchen while she baked, could picture Rose Hill clear as day busy for a small town instead of the quiet, ghostly echoes that had been left behind. Harry’s hand brushed over his forehead and his lips, soft and damp, pressed a lingering kiss in the wake of his fingers and he, willingly, folded on top of Harley’s body when he pulled him down close, a hand on his neck and another on his hip to guide. “Tell me everything’s going to be okay.” Harley begged simply to keep him talking. 

“I… that would be a promise I can’t guarantee.” 

Harley looked into his eyes,  _ really _ and truly looked at him, and realized with a start that his usually clear blues were swimming with unshed tears. He couldn’t count the amount of times he had seen Harry cry because they were  _ never _ . He had seen all ranges of Harry Osborn  _ except _ sadness - fear, love, happiness, anger and pride. But never… never anything that had made him cry. “Everything’s going to be okay.” He said after a moment, his hand square in the center of Harry’s back where he could feel the dip of his spine as he struggled to pull himself together. 

“I won’t make you promise.” 

“I know.” Harley kissed under his eye and Harry’s face turned from him to bury in the crook of his shoulder, nose brushing against the pulse in his throat. “I’ll come back.” 

His arms holding tight said everything Harry couldn’t and Harley was, perhaps, a little relieved to feel the shake of his shoulders. Five years. How could someone go five years without giving into the sadness of grief? “When this is over,” Harley spoke against the strands of his hair. “We’re getting married. I don’t care where we go, I don’t care how we do it, but I’m making you mine.” Forever. 

“I don’t want to lose you.” 

Because Harry’s reservations on the entire plan came from a very real and animalistic fear that Harley had been trying so hard not to focus on, least it strike him down too. They had worked so hard -  _ Harry _ had worked so hard - to carve out a piece of this broken world for them. The very real fact that even if this went  _ right _ Harley might leave back Tennessee and his  _ old _ family must have been grating on Harry’s nerves since the beginning. Gwen would have her parents and brother again, Harley his mother and sister,  _ Stanley _ his genetic parents and Harry would be… left. Alone except for a father he never wanted back into his life. “You’re worried about that?” Harley sighed, deep in his chest because, at this point, a life without Harry Osborn or Gwen Stacey or Stanley was impossible for him to imagine. “I’m going to be here. No matter how this works out. I’m going to be right here.” 

“Don’t.” 

“I  _ promise _ .”

\--

Vormir’s atmosphere was  _ different _ once he was standing on it. It was all  _ different _ and that didn’t feel like the right word to be using but it was the only one that Harry’s brain could work around. Different. Red. Purple. Black. Heavy and light at the same time. Too hot and then too cold. He felt  _ wrong _ wearing the white suit with the red Avengers symbol stamped onto the corner. He wasn’t one of them - had never  _ wanted _ to be - and, really, it should have been someone, anyone else in his place. “Come on,” Natasha nudged him forward with a gentle hand and Clint was already halfway up, bow collapsed in his grip and held down by his side. 

The air tickled his lungs and Harry wished he had thought to bring a camera because the images of the universe stretched out from Vormir’s sky was a thing of fairy tales. Stanley would have loved it. He was smack between the two assassins - Clint in front and Natasha picking up the rear. It was a sign of protection and Harry knew it. He wasn’t useless but he wasn’t exactly the most powerful either. If a fight were to break out, between the two Avengers, he would be only a liability. As it was, he was painfully aware of how  _ human _ he was. 

“What do you mean a soul for a soul?” Harry asked the floating red monster of a man in front of them while the other two shared a long, borderline passionate look between each other. Their conversation wasn’t to be overheard but Harry had spent enough time around heroes to have picked up on how stupidly self sacrificing they tended to be. 

“A soul must be given,” said what the history books referred to as Red Skull ominously. “In order for the soul stone to be yours.” 

“It has to be done, Nat.” Clint insisted breaking their conversation of silent looks. 

“Bullshit,” Harry rolled his eyes while his mind worked over the problem that had just been presented. “That doesn’t necessarily mean death.” 

“What?” Natasha tugged sharply on his elbow but he sidestepped to stay between them. 

“Think with whatever part of you  _ doesn’t _ have an honor bound suicide wish.” Harry snapped and did what would probably be considered a  _ stupid _ move and shoved the two assassins away in opposite corners. “You don’t have to be dead to give up your soul. And  _ that’s _ assuming that living beings even  _ have  _ a soul.” 

“The rules are pretty clear.” 

“The rules  _ are not  _ pretty clear.” Harry held out a hand in front of him, palm upwards as though something were about to drop into it. “Soul for a soul. Okay. Take mine.” 

“No!” Natasha’s hand on his upper arm was tight and painful and she yanked him backwards. “You are not sacrificing yourself.” 

“ _ I’m not _ !” He tried to, unsuccessfully, shake her off. “You need a soul? Take  _ mine! _ It’s yours!” 

“That is not how this works.” Red Skull cautioned. 

“Kid,” Clint snapped his fingers in front of his face to draw his attention. “You say  _ we _ have a death wish?” 

“No, I said you’re both too goddamn idiotic to know careful wording when you hear it.” Harry glowered. “I’m not talking to this overgrown period stain but to  _ you _ . If you need a soul take  _ mine _ . Use  _ mine _ and I will keep you safe.” 

For Harry it felt as though time had slowed to a stop, Natasha’s hand just a breath away from tightening on his arm, Clint’s eyes calculating and Red Skull looking… mildly insulted. The rocks they had kicked up when moving seemed to still halfway through the air, the clouds above had stopped moving. Harry was the only thing moving in real time, the only thing keeping with the normal speed of time. “Please.” He asked no one but what he  _ hoped _ was listening. 

Harry was a man of science and he always had been. The science behind the stones made no sense at all to him - perhaps Earth’s logic just hadn’t reached that level yet or perhaps they weren’t meant to be understood. Either way, if a  _ stone _ such as the Mind Stone could bring life to a previously lifeless being such as Vision then he theorized the others had some capabilities of their own. Perhaps it was idiotic to put so much faith in a tiny stone but  _ faith _ was all Harry had that moment.  _ You promise to keep us safe?  _ A breath whispered over the shell of his ear, soft and barely there. 

“I can’t. I  _ can’t _ make promises like that.” Harry bit at his lip and drummed his fingers against the pant that covered his leg. “But I  _ promise _ that I’ll  _ try _ .”

His chest burned as though someone had jammed a knife covered in acid into his skin and, with a breathless shout, he dropped to his knees, Natasha’s hand still holding tight onto his arm. She fell with him and an arrow whistled through the air to pierce Red Skull’s chest. He let out a strangled noise when it made contact. “Harry?” Natasha’s fingers were light and skilled where they pressed into where the suit covered his chest. Her hair, an odd mixture of orange and blonde, twisted in front of her face. “What did he do?”    
He coughed once, twice, and over and over again as something tried to squeeze its way up his throat. “He’s choking.” Natasha stated the obvious and Clint bounded over, arms tight under Harry’s armpits and slammed two fists between his chest and ribcage. It scratched and pulled and  _ cut _ one the way out and it glittered against the stone when Harry could finally gasp in a full breath again. Blood coated his teeth and Natasha’s hand was clammy on the back of his neck in a way to keep his head forced downwards. Clint’s fingers were shaking when they picked the stone up and turned it perfectly so that it glittered in the dull light. 

“Holy shit.” He said, amazed and a little bit impressed. “Good job, kid.” 

\--

New York 2012 wasn’t all that different from New York End of the World. For one, the sheer amount of property damage due to aliens was the same. The property damage due to heroes was… well pretty much the same. 

In 2012 Harley was back in Tennessee sitting by the window every night hoping his father was on his way back home. 

_ Now _ , he was in a suit that measured his vitals, pressed up tight against Tony Stark’s arm and watching as the final showdown between the Avengers and Loki unfolded in the old Stark Tower. “This is ridiculous.” He muttered. “Why couldn’t I have just gone with Doctor Banner?” 

“Bruce needed some alone time.” Tony shoved at his shoulder. “And get  _ down _ will you? You’re like a beanstalk.” 

“You’re just jealous, polly pocket.” He rolled his eyes. “What’s the plan, old man? Just… take it while your back is turned?” 

“The  _ plan _ is to grab it once it’s in Shield custody.” 

“But it’s  _ right there _ .” 

“Yes it is. But so am I.” Tony scoffed and nudged Harley back a bit more. “And I  _ will _ recognize a Yeti coming at me.” 

“I’m closer to a Bigfoot.” 

“You two never shut up.” Captain America bemoaned through their coms. 

“Awe, I think it’s cute.” Scott tugged on Tony’s collar. “One day me and Cassie can go on missions like this and just joke at each other.” 

“Isn’t Cassie your daughter?” 

“Yep!” 

Tony sighed, long and suffering (it was the sigh he  _ always _ did when people insinuated Harley was his child or, worse, that  _ Harry _ was) and pointed at the glowing Tesseract in the middle of the floor. “ _ That _ stays where it is for now.” 

“Boring.” Scott muttered. 

“Boring.” Harley agreed. 

\--

“I’m going to have to fight myself.” Steve mumbled through the coms mere minutes later. 

“What?” Harley stammered and blinked out of whatever dazed stupor he had just been caught in. “You better  _ not _ .”

“Son,” Harley  _ hated _ being called son but it seemed Steve was insistent on calling anyone younger than him by that same nickname. “We don’t really have time to make a different choice right now.” 

“We do.” Harley argued. “We absolutely do.” He picked up his pace, a borderline run, until he saw him - tall, blonde and patriotic - following after  _ himself _ like a good, yet creepy, soldier. “You can’t  _ talk _ to yourself. We went over this in the briefing.” 

“Harley.” 

“Shut.” He poked a finger hard into Captain America’s chest and pushed him out of view. “Excuse me! Captain America, sir!” He jogged up to meet the other - much younger, much more blonde, still ridiculously patriotic - copy. Harley had swiped a Shield jacket only moments before and he swung the windbreaker over his shoulders with a charming smile. 

In his mind he could imagine Harry’s argument on sending him along with the New York team -  _ none of you know him and  _ all _ of you are a liability in one way or another _ \- playing on a loop. He trusted Harley to be smart and clever and even if Harley didn’t trust  _ himself _ he did trust Harry’s judgement. “What can I do for you?” The Captain turned to look at him, so much more trusting than the one Harley had spent the majority of the day with. 

Harley smiled like the young agent he was trying to impersonate - impressionable and sheepish - and scratched at his neck. “Awe, heck.” He thickened his accent. “I was hopin’ you could do me a favor?” 

Captain America tilted his head and regarded him with blue eyes. “What’s that?” 

“My sister is a real big fan o’ yours and…” 

The Captain actually blushed. “Oh! Uh… of course.” 

Harley moved as though excited by the prospect and fished his phone out of his pocket to hold it in front of them. He squished his cheek against Steve’s and smiled into the camera, gesturing quickly behind his back for Scott to do his thing with the briefcase. Whatever happened, happened quick and he thanked Captain America profusely as he walked away, briefcase empty and none the wiser to the event that had just occurred. Harley sighed loudly once the elevator doors closed and tossed Steve the phone. “Souvenir.” 

\--

The first thing Harley noticed when they reappeared back on the landing was that  _ everyone _ was there. Well, everyone that really mattered. Gwen had reappeared with a big smile on her face and Thor’s arm thrown casually and strong over her shoulders. Tony had looked across at Steve and  _ laughed _ , Doctor Banner wiped away something close to tears and Harley thought that, perhaps, this was the first time in five years that the Avengers felt  _ happy _ . 

The second thing he noticed was that the team that had gone to Vormir was suspiciously quiet. 

His eyes sought out Harry like the magnet he was, took stalk of the pale tinge to his face, the dark red that stained his lips and the supportive arm Natasha had around his waist as though he were about to fall over. Harley was moving before the time travel vertigo had even left his body. 

The great thing about what Harley referred to as  _ his team _ was that they moved very seamlessly around and with each other. Harley moved and so did Gwen - right in time too because Stanley was already running into the room on little legs and Happy hot on his heels. Gwen caught Stanley around the waist and swung him up in the air with the grace of someone very much used to having to intercept a barrelling child and Stanley’s giggles were the backdrop to the way time seemed to slow just moments before Harley managed to get to Harry. 

Because the dark red on his lips was  _ blood _ and blood was never something Harley wanted to see staining someone as pure as Harry. “He’s okay.” Clint said quickly and shared a look with Natasha over their heads. “Or, well, he will be once Bruce takes a look.” 

“What?” Bruce perked up at his name, big and green and snapping the attention of everyone that was busy relishing in their success to a quick standstill. They all started, Harley  _ felt _ more than heard Tony move rapidly towards them and Harley hovered his hands to frame Harry’s face and coast down to his neck, chest, arms, and back up, eyes emploring for answers. The most concerning part, in Harley’s opinion, wasn’t even the blood - it was the  _ silence _ . 

He had known Harry Osborn for five years now and he might have been  _ quiet _ but he was never…  _ silent. _

It was disturbing and worrying and his eyes looked a little dull even when they refused to move from Harley’s own. “Har…”

“He’s okay.” Natasha repeated Clint’s words but handed him off when Harley finally closed a hand on his hip. 

“I should… we should get him to the table.” Bruce hovered and Tony hovered and they all were  _ hovering _ . 

“You’re okay?” Harley asked slowly and waited until Harry nodded, slow and with a small wince before tugging him into his arms. He held him, for just a moment, and relaxed into the clasp of arms around his back and a nose pressed into his throat. He was breathing, he was  _ quiet _ , but he was breathing. 

“What happened?” Tony asked the others and something sick coiled in Harley’s stomach at the way they both glanced at the man in Harley’s arms before lowering their voices so that they couldn’t be overheard. Harley pursed his lips and kissed the crown of Harry’s head roughly. 

“Good job.” Gwen interrupted their moment softly, Stanley on her hip and reaching out a tiny, cold finger to run a long line down their stained cheeks. He hugged them both tight around the neck and Harley watched the way Harry’s eyes fluttered shut at the feel of him in his arms and repeated the sentiment to her too. Gwen’s eyes twinkled. “I remember someone telling me something about a wedding if all of this worked out?” 

Harley could  _ hear _ the look Harry sent her but he didn’t open his mouth to say anything. “Guess you have to go ring shopping then.” Harley nudged her shoulder with his own. 

Gwen laughed and it put a smile on all of their faces. 

\--

“A little scratched up.” Doctor Banner said and tossed the gloves he had been wearing in the trash. “There’s no infection but I’m going to be giving you antibiotics just to be careful… we don’t know what exactly was on that stone.” He said after a moment of careful contemplation and leaned a hip against the table Harry swung his legs off of. “About what you did…” 

Harry swallowed hard and winced at the drag of saliva off the scrapes. He shook his head and Bruce looked at the floor instead of him. “Don’t.” His voice sounded like he had gone ten rounds with a pack of cigarettes and lost. 

“It could have ended badly. If Clint and Nat hadn’t been there…” 

Harry didn’t have the words to say that he was, perhaps, more worried about what would have happened if  _ he _ hadn’t been there. They had both been so willing to sacrifice themselves that he was sure a fight would have broken out with one, or even both, of them flinging themselves off that cliffside. He was pretty sure, actually, that all of the Avengers would have made the same choice. They didn’t know any better - didn’t  _ think _ beyond the surface a lot of the time. That wasn’t to say that Harry thought he was the smartest out of  _ all _ of them - far from it, Harley was brilliant and Gwen was literally working towards a degree in molecular biology - he was just… more  _ used _ to having to read between the lines. Business, especially that of backroom deals and anything Norman Osborn touched, was full of nuance and double (sometimes triple) meanings. 

Harry didn’t know how to say that he could feel the thrum of the world beneath his fingertips and soles of his feet. He didn’t know the right way to explain that his soul didn’t feel as though it belonged in his body anymore unless they were touching him to hold him in place. He didn’t know the way to explain the shadows - light and dark and wispy - he could see in all corners of the rooms, meandering and wallowing and  _ begging _ to be heard. Science didn’t explain it -  _ how _ could science explain something that it had never seen before? He could hear them all and understand nothing they were saying at the same time. 

“Your life matters too, you know?” Doctor Banner peered over the rim of his glasses. 

Harry glowered. “I’m not suicidal.” 

“This action-.” 

“If you want to talk about  _ righteously  _ suicidal motives look at your ow…  _ own  _ before you point fingers at mine.” His cheeks flushed angrily Harry hopped off the table and swayed forward for just a moment before he caught himself. He lied to himself that it was just that he had moved too fast and lost his balance and not the way the lost souls reached out to grab at him at all sides the moment his feet touched the ground. 

“Harry…” 

“Are we finished, Doctor Banner?” He raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms, the room suddenly too chilly against his bare arms. “Because we have a universe to save.” 

\--

The world felt exactly the same after Bruce had snapped the glove him and Tony had painstakingly put together days before, the stones glittering in the afternoon sunlight. There was no pause as the universe righted itself or overwhelming noise. 

Except it  _ was _ louder and Harley could admit that he only noticed it because of the way Steve cocked his head and the attuned senses of a parent to any  _ slight _ change to the sound of the atmosphere around them. Birds. There were double the birds.

“Did it work?” Harley couldn’t say who asked it except it happened at the exact same time that his phone vibrated in his pocket with the chime of an incoming call. He had kept the same number he had when he was younger and he hadn’t been able to delete Abbie or his mother’s number. It had been five years since he had seen their name flash across the screen though. 

“Oh god.” He almost dropped it in the fumble to press accept and Gwen was swiping out her own phone, crying out a loud and triumphant  _ Dad _ the moment it connected. 

“Harley? Where  _ are _ you? Where’s the  _ car _ ?” Abbie demanded - sweet and young and a little too brash and he could just picture her, pigtails framing her cheeks and bright pink sweater cut off at the waist. He had almost forgotten what her voice sounded like. He choked on his answer and felt the hot sting of tears on his cheeks. “Harley?” 

“H… hey, Abs.” 

“Are… are you  _ crying _ ? What’s going on?” 

“You’re okay? You and Ma, you’re both okay?” 

“ _ Yes _ , Harley. Where are you?” 

He glanced at the room around him, saw the way Clint leaned heavily against Natasha’s shoulder, both of them staring down at his screen as it lit up with message after message. He saw Gwen, knelt in the corner crying into the receiver of her phone as she listened to her father. And his eyes settled on Harry, knelt in front of Bruce and prying off the glove with insistent and stubborn fingers. “Safe.” He said through tears. “ _ God _ , it worked.” 

“What worked?” Abbie, understandably, was confused. “Ma says there’s way too much dust in the house, Harls. Wasn’t that your job?” 

He laughed around a sob. “It was. It was my job.” 

“Where are you?” 

“New York.” 

“ _ What _ ?” 

“I missed you.” Shakingly, his hand covered his mouth and wiped at his eyes. “I missed you so much.” 

\--

Of course it wasn’t as easy as simply restoring life to the universe. It was too much to think that it would be. Harry was only happy about two things: that he had sent Stanley away with Happy Hogan to stay with Pepper while they did the  _ actual _ test on if the stones would even work for them, and that Harley and Gwen got their family back. Himself, well, he hadn’t bothered looking at his phone for a reason. 

He didn’t know  _ how _ Thanos was there with an army much bigger than their small one, didn’t know the importance of Steve Rogers wielding Thor’s hammer or the red portals that opened up around them. Didn’t have the  _ time _ available to even start thinking it through and applying logic. He, instead, could only do what he was best at and stay back while everyone else fought. He didn’t have armor, didn’t have skills aside from mere basic self defense and science. He didn’t  _ want _ to fight in a war. 

But he also wasn’t about to let Harley and Gwen fight alone. 

“You’re okay?” Harley’s suit opened to reveal his sweat covered cheeks, a shallow cut on one of them from the building collapse and a bruised shoulder from the way he was holding himself. 

He still looked a thousand times lighter than he had in the last five years. “All good.” Harry said through the croak in his throat and smiled the best he could given their current situation. 

“You stay up here, yeah?” Harley nodded to the hill he had found Harry on. 

He laughed at the look Harry sent him and pulled him in around the waist for a passionate kiss. It was more tongue than perhaps the situation called for. “I’ll be in here,” Harry said with a tap to the side of Harley’s head and shoved him back into his suit. “Go save the world.” 

“I’m looking at it.” 

“What?”

“My world.” The helmet snapped shut and he took off before Harry could do more but sputter, a trail of dust kicked up moments later. 

He wouldn’t admit how he smiled afterwards, looking over the edge of the tall hill and watching the battle ensue around them. “Dumbass.” He muttered to himself before clicking on the coms. “Where are you hiding, Ghost?” 

“ _ I’m fighting aliens _ !” Gwen shouted in response, either terrified or overjoyed (it was typically hard to tell with her). He squinted for the familiar white and black suit. 

“Ghost, left!” He ordered just as he caught sight of her below and Gwen executed the move expertly. She might have been able to sense the oncoming attack herself, but her danger sense had to be going off at every moment with the amount of obvious and present danger she was standing in the middle of. 

And then he saw him. 

It. 

Red and blue and Harry felt like he was thirteen again watching as Peter Parker did something deathly stupid that would end in one or both of them getting a stern talking to in the Parker’s kitchen. It was like looking into the past, watching him be embraced tightly by Tony Stark down below. 

Peter Parker looked like a life that didn’t belong to Harry anymore. 

\--

Tony Stark looked Thanos in the eye and snapped him out of existence. 

Harley Keener cut off his arm before the dead cells could spread. 

\--

“Stop squirming.” Harley snorted from where he sat on the other side of Tony, mostly at the disgruntled look on the old man’s face when Harry all but slapped his good,  _ still attached _ , shoulder with a threatening scowl. 

“It tickles.” Tony slurred. Harry had him hooked up to the good drugs while he worked and  _ technically _ Harley shouldn’t have been with them but Harry’s hands were shaking a bit too much to do everything without assistance and Bruce’s fingers were still much too big. Inevitably Tony squirmed again and Harry let out that sigh that told Harley he was about ten minutes away from stitching Tony into the table. 

“If you keep moving,” Harley whispered into Tony’s ear like a secret. “I think Harry will literally make you paralized.” 

Tony’s cheeks flushed. “No.” 

“Then stop moving.” Harley patted his shoulder and held onto his good hand and tried not to think about what it would have done to him - to all of them - if he  _ hadn’t _ thought quick enough to laser through his arm. If it  _ hadn’t _ worked and Tony had perished after saving them all. The others, he knew, were outside getting patched up themselves or waiting to hear how Tony’s quick battlefront surgery was going. “You need help?” He addressed the question to Harry, to the way his fingers were coated with blood and throat moving to avoid a cough and Harley knew it had been hard for him. To see it all from above and not get involved beyond directing Harley and Gwen into dangerous areas. On top of that, Harley had nearly died himself when the hill Harry had been standing on had taken a hit and he had dropped from coms for five long minutes. 

He was fine. Alive and whole if just a bit bruised. No worse than Harley himself was. 

Except his hands were shaking. 

“Hey.” Harley put a hand over Harry’s own and squeezed until he looked up at him through his eyelashes. Tony’s eyes were fluttering shut and Harley hoped he slept. Hoped he got some time to relax against the bed of the nearly destroyed medbay. “You okay, babe?” 

His eyes flitted over Harley’s face, took in his cuts and bruises and cataloged them by severity to be attended to later. “Do I have time to be anything else?” 

Harley frowned. “Yes.” He couldn’t promise that, though. There was still plenty of pickup that needed to be done - plenty of more than  _ basic _ first aid that had to be given and very few of them were qualified to do such procedures. There were people they hadn’t met in the next room, and one particularly that Harley knew Harry was avoiding. There were phone calls and families and a  _ slew _ of consequences that Harley  _ knew _ were flying through Harry’s mind that he couldn’t even quiet late at night. “We just saved the world.” 

“Did we, though?” Harry hummed as he turned back to his work of stitching Tony’s arm closed. “Or did we just make it worse?” 

“Harry.” He looked up only when Harley refused to look away, a stubborn set to his lips. “We did good.  _ You _ did good.” 

\--

It was by pure accident that Harry ran into Peter Parker - sixteen and sitting in the corner of Tony’s room with May beside him like the strong and comforting presence she had always been. Pepper and Morgan were there too - Stanley coloring by their side and he perked up the moment Harry walked in. “Daddy!” Coloring book abandoned he collided hard with Harry’s knees and hugged him tight. “Popa hasn’t woken up yet.” 

Careful of his own injuries and the curious looks from the Parkers he knelt down until Stanley could link his arms around his neck and hold him close. He breathed him in - mint and chocolate shavings and playdoh - and kissed just under his eye. “That’s probably a good thing, Stan. He needs his sleep in order to get better.” 

“Like when I’m sick?” 

“Like when you’re sick.” 

“You look like you need some more sleep.” Pepper said from where she held Tony’s hand tight in both of hers, Morgan snoozing on her lap. 

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Harry said with a wave and wink and shooed Stanley away just a bit to check over Tony’s charts. 

“He’s okay.” Pepper spoke after a moment of silence. “You did good,  _ doctor _ .” 

His lips quirked at the tease and he studiously tried to ignore the others in the room. They weren’t his life. Not anymore. “I’m May.” Her voice sounded the same that he remembered. Strong and kind. Lovely and sweet. 

Harry hadn’t missed much of anyone after the initial snap. 

But he had been missing the Parkers for a good deal of his life. 

_ I know,  _ he wanted to shout at them.  _ How do you not know me? I loved you _ . 

“Nice to meet you, m’am.” He said instead without looking at her. 

A moment of silence passed. “And you are?” She prodded when the silence started to be twinged with awkwardness. “If you’re here I assume you had something to do with bringing back me and my nephew.” 

“He did.” Pepper said when Harry simply pursed his lips to avoid answering. “This is Harry.” 

“ _ Harry _ ?” Peter breathed and Harry felt the hot sting of tears prick at the corner of his eyes. 

“Call me when he wakes up.” 

“Harry? Harry  _ Osborn? _ ” 

“Please.” Pepper nodded, her eyes concerned and Harry, like the coward he had always been, ran out the door. 

\--

He  _ did _ talk to them. It was later in the week though, after Harley had deemed that Harry had gotten enough sleep to be more than  _ functional _ and the Soul Stone was safe in his possession. It had been an emotional upheaval to speak to Peter Parker again - to have aged so much while he didn’t age at all. To have lived through so much when he hadn’t. But they had made good. Had hugged and cried and apologized for hours. 

“I knew.” 

“About me?” 

“About Spider-Man. I wanted to tell you.” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“Would you have listened? If I did.” 

“... No.”

\--

The new  _ new _ world was a clusterfuck if Harley had ever seen one. There were more civil court cases than could be executed effortlessly. More were homeless and lost than before. He had hopped on a plane with Harry and Stanley and flew out to Tennessee in a way that  _ only _ someone with a lot of money could have pulled off after an innational crisis. 

Stanley’s genetic parents never tried to find him. 

They didn’t have a fancy wedding but a soft one at the courthouse, Gwen and Mary Jane as witnesses in jeans and smart blazers. They kissed around bruises and cuts and pledged forever. 

Norman Osborn tried to take back his company but, by that point, Oscorp had flourished under his son’s tutelage and the board members voted to keep the young CEO instead of the one that didn’t fit it’s new and current business plan. It would be a problem, later. 

“Who’s this?” Harley’s mother asked, wiping at Harley’s cheeks and dabbing at her own as she stared up into the face of her son that grew up without her. 

“Ma,” Harley held out a hand behind him and Harry’s warm one found his without a moment of thought, Stanley between the two of them with half lidded and tired eyes. “I’d like you to meet our family.” 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Why the hell did you read 12000 words of this?


End file.
